Jim Elledge’s “Theotokos”

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The writer Jim Elledge has moved into my community, and I recently bumped into him at our local coffee house.  Jim has received multiple Lambda Literary Awards and also won the Georgia Author of the Year Award in biography.  I’ve been reading and enjoying his collection of poems, “Tapping My Arm for a Vein.”  One of my favorites so far is the prose poem “Theotokos.” I’ve pasted the short poem below, but you can see it and four other poems in the online journal LocusPoint.

THEOTOKOS

Photosynthesis: digestion in midair, kisses sun and plant share, prayer aglitter. Light hovers when gulls zigzag then wheel. Light skims surf, a frieze of epiphany. As he creates other worlds, God hums to himself melodies we’re lucky to overhear. Thus: shadows crow beneath leaves, clocks snicker locked up indoors, herds of spiders weave webs they string in triangles littered with flies’ wings that flutter in dank breezes.