MARK DAMON PUCKETT

The drunk man thinks of suicide at the pulpit


The drunk man at
the pulpit has given up
and wants two bodies
so he can commit 
suicide twice,
thinking this as he 
preaches to nothing.
He sneaks into the 
church at night
and sleeps, and
reeks, but he has 
never forgotten
what it means to 
be clean; he is not bad,
he is okay, he is good; 
he even thinks it is 
wrong to touch this 
preacher’s microphone,
but he has nothing else
to do, so he’s come up,
and he pretends
to preach to 
the invisible,
and he is drunk, 
yes, he is drunk,
always drunk,
but he has something
to say, knows it is 
something
and when he goes 
to the back of the pews
to sleep under them,
he admits he has found
some places to hide
and that maybe one
body, maybe, is enough 
to think about dying.
 

 
119 The Paris-American

Mark Damon Puckett teaches in the graduate center at Lenoir-Rhyne University's  M.A. in Writing program in downtown Asheville, NC. During his M.F.A. in Fiction  at the University of Houston, he studied poetry with Pulitzer-winner Richard Howard, later teaching Poetic Techniques at SUNY-Purchase.  His varied work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Crescent Review, Tusculum Review, Act Two, ARTnews,  Saveur, USA Today and more.  He also received his M.A. in English and M.Litt. in African-American Studies from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.  He is the author of three books of fiction, The Reclusives, YOU with The Ill-usives and most recently The Killer Detective Novelist.  This poem won the 2013 Bread Loaf School of English Robert Haiduke Poetry Prize judged by New Yorker poet, David Huddle. www.markdamonpuckett.com

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   Next week's poet:

 Michael Shewmaker