Christian J. Collier is an American Southern writer. He is the author of Greater Ghost (Four Way Books, 2024), and the chapbook The Gleaming of the Blade, the 2021 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press.
CASE STUDY
Christian J. Collier
We were ravaged by our loss, our child.
In the shower, slightly past midnight,
after I’d covered the length & width of her back with suds,
she started crying. Then, I started crying.
The grief we could no longer cradle, a house sparrow’s song,
poured from us into a bundle of steam.
Our slumped network of nerves & muscle convulsed
while we bawled.
We stood in limbo, beyond time,
a faint gray comma
between us & the planet rotating beside
our flesh. The shower tiles drank us in,
their unblinking, marble eyes absorbed
what becomes of two poisoned creatures
when their future, each sage green branch of it, has died back.
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THE COMPLINE
Christian J. Collier
Christian J. Collier
Between us, there are one hundred one
umber haints in our home.
In bed, we discuss
our future, our children woven in myrrh, sitting
in some tomorrow, waiting for us to join & give them our science
so they can live.
I tell her what I fear: I’ll walk into fogged, writhen woods & die
when our babies are too young to carry my baritone with them.
I’ll become
the almost-stranger
they hear their mother’s prayers paint the night sky for.
The Lord giveth & The Lord taketh parents every day.
Love is no shield against His mighty ginger hand or will.
Even language passes away.
Even the bouquet of vowels & syllables collected
each year can be swept from the scaly floor of the tongue.
All stories end in death
if we are honest with ourselves & how the world works.
If I am being honest,
when I, eventually, hear my love sleeping by my side,
I eye the gloom, whisper to God, ask that He spare me
the escape, the emptying out of the marigold light,
for many years. I ask that, when it finally comes, I not go before
I know all I’ve set my heart upon will live on well without me.
I ask Him to forgive my selfish maw for having the nerve
to call out His name & flood His holy ear with the word more.
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GOD
Christian J. Collier
I used to think
there was only one of You
before the miscarriage.
Now, I am not so sure.
Maybe there are a number of Gods to wade through
before falling at the feet of the last true one:
the jade God we pray to
who does not come or answer
& the plum one who appears to offer salvation;
the opal God who offers a limited extent of His kingdom
& the olive one who only offers condolences;
let us not forget the violet God that is bad with man
because He is deeply holy.
We all seek the one of manna though, don’t we?
He, the one of follow-through.
He, the one of action & consequence.
He, the one holding all we hunger for
like butterscotch in His palms.
That’s the God I want
to be alone with for a few moments,
the God I wish to have to myself
in the hushed hours when I should be up & readying for work
like millions of other souls dispersed
across the country’s ink-black pillow.
That’s the God whose name I utter
when I sit in silence
on the shoulder of my mattress. I dream
with eyes open of goading Him into halting my child’s rest,
guiding his or her tiny light close to the brushfire
flickering in my breath.
That God? That great & swollen orange storm?
That’s the God haunting me. The God who keeps His distance.
The God whose star-draped hands I envy.
They come at day’s end
to tuck my baby, my ember, into its infinite, feathered bed.