The sun is off
In prayer
In breath abide
Words’ apogee
In words, the righteous try to wrap
Breath that via
Words is awl
Piercing dark entire
Lacy lights, each a mouth in chorus
Reach every corner of every edict
That would palazzi
Be and inside them so many a citizen
Brought low as guests in cycling breath, learn not to pray but breathe
Farid Matuk is the author of the poetry collections This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine Editions, 2010), The Real Horse (University of Arizona Press, 2018), and Moon Mirrored Indivisible (University of Chicago Press, 2025). With artist Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez, Matuk created the book-arts project Redolent, recipient of the 2023 Anna Rabinowitz Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Matuk is also the translator of Tilsa Otta’s selected poems, The Hormone of Darkness (Graywolf Press, 2024). Matuk’s work has been supported by the Headlands Center for the Arts, a Holloway Lectureship in the Practice of Poetry at UC Berkeley, and a 2024 USA Fellowship.
