FOUR WAY BOOKS: Gary Copeland Lilley, The Subsequent Blues

The Subsequent Blues
by Gary Copeland Lilley

ISBN: 1-884800-54-8
paper, 78 pages, $14.95

SANCTUARIES FOR THE DEACON’S SONS

This is the poem where my brother becomes
me in the pulpit at his Pentecostal church
and the faithful lean forward in their seats
as he witnesses having been a womanizer,
a liar, a cocaine thief and nothing
could touch him, how he’d laid on the side
of a lean shot glass until late in the day
with God over him, how he jack-hammered
holes in the crazy streets, bandana dripping
and him pushing the blade, how the summer
was the heat, and trouble and love simmered
to a circumstance, getting sanctified strength
in lockdown, the right shoes to walk parole
and the blues, Lucifer playing the steel strings.

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