“Mad Poet Passes” by J.S. Absher

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b.Ber. 55B I.22.D Said Raba, “People are not shown in dreams [such impossibilities as] either a golden palm tree or an elephant going through the eye of a needle.”

The mad poet has occasion to undress.

The moral socks, learned leggings, and sophistic

long johns (the logical holes make them useless),

belt and sword-frog, hair shirt, stained jeans, the pricked

leather bag with his papers: a no-name man

wears his whole self on him or he dies,

Nemo without a story. But he must go sans

all of it to pass through the needle’s eye

so narrow a serpent can’t pass through, nor rope,

nor even a knotted thread. To it he trudges

pachydermatous in his habits and grudges,

low thread-count affections and frayed hopes.

He cannot see what’s on the other side

till he strips, slips through, and his eyes grow wide.

This piece was published in 2025 as part of the 14th Annual Lit Blitz by the Mormon Lit Lab. Sign up for our newsletter for future updates.