“The Joseph Lines” by Michael Hicks

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I was impaled on a star.

The clouds shook like petticoats.

My face burned like hot soup.

God did all this to me.

He dragged me into his heaven of milk.

He made me open boxes to see if they’d sing.

He bent me like underwater light.

He sifted me in old constellations.

He plowed me like a mud-bank.

He trampled me with the authority of dreams.

I fell asleep in one country

and woke up in another.

I spoke to the people

and my words were both architecture

and plumage.

I married a thousand

hypotheses.

I saw fields as laws

waiting to be threshed.

If someone coughed

during a prayer

I was the prayer and the cough.

If someone slammed a barn,

I was the slamming

and the darkness inside.

And the people loved me for this.

I was the fresh rhubarb growing in the dog pen.

Widows planted their jewelry in my backyard.

Then God came back

and said,

Let there be shade.

Let all taste be hunger.

And then I was the snort of the prize hog.

I was the ugly dazzle of ego.

My anger was a logging chain.

No one knew if I was bitten or roused.

I was a fever worse than malaria.

I was the bone stuck in my own throat.

And I saw my own death

flash like a pigeon.

Some call me

half-plateau, half ditch.

But if you sever a limb

I am the phantom limb

that keeps throbbing.

You can throw me off

like a cracked bridle.

You can spit me out

like sour beer.

You can axe me

into totem poles.

You can shovel me

back to Jesus.

But I am the dent in your history.

You have to choose whether to hunt me or ride me.

All that counts is the route of escape.

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.