Dennis Clark

The Old Mormon Poetry

Moroni 12

My father has appeared—not in a dream—and shown me where to haul the plates off to,a harder task now that I had the recordsof Mormon whole and Ether shortened upand needed a bigger box to…

Statement Before the World Expands

if i have seemed lately to turn from you 
and mail my mind beyond our common rooms 
as if the calm intelligence your eyes 
offer to share were not sufficient plea 

Dry Tree

This year, for the first time in many years,
we’re thinking of hosting a dead and drying tree
in some public room of our house, one garlanded
in lights, the blossoms of dying winter—and hanging

Bridegroom

When Jesus took the church to bed, rocks rent, 
earth groaned, sky split, spilt watered wine. 
Trees shivered to their hearts to know the carpenter 
laid in the bed he’d made, stone of his stone. 

The Mormon Peace Gathering

Last Vegas, Nevada : March, 1992

Fresh from Mountain Meadows, headed home 
from the Nevada Test Site, we were high 
from crawling under barbed wire, and trespassing, 
when I flipped the doe into the suicide lane.

As the Savor: The Poetry of R. A. Christmas | R. A. Christmas, Saviors on Mt. Disneyland: New and Collected Poems

If you have never read a poem by Bob Christmas, this book is your chance to catch up. Take it. 

If you have read poems by Bob Christmas, this book is your chance to enjoy yourself all over again. Plunge in.

Corn Grows in Rows

Corn grows in my father’s backyard garden 
in ten green files, each row a week taller, 
the tallest now past two months, nearly ripe. 
The years he’s planted gardens range beyond
the year that I was born in early spring, 
but memory recalls three different plots 

A Name and a Blessing

the father and his friends, holding 
the holy high priesthood and the infant, 
stand in a circle, facing each other, 
right hands supporting the baby—
rising, falling to gentle it—
left hands on the next near neighbor shoulder,
on the stand before the meeting of saints 
this fast and testimony Sunday; 

Meadow

(to my daughter—in explanation of her name) 

Balance is what we mean the name 
to tell her when she’s suckled news 
into her brain that birth knits her 
into the nervous system of 
the spastic, plastic planet,

Everything that Glitters | Ron Carlson, Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Though set in Salt Lake City, Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald is not a “Mormon novel”, even in the way that Scowcroft’s The Ordeal of Dudley Dean is—which does not mean it will not interest Mormons.…

Before the world expands

I want to say it’s been swell knowing you, 
even as you grow toward the grave, 
hurt hours when your confinement will set free
that body from its berth within the womb. 

Song for his Left Ear

for Harlow Soderborg Clark, surgically deaf 

By sheer nerve you’ve gone Van Gogh one better: 
cut your ear off from your brain, but 
left it blooming in your hair. 
You’d auditioned city living just so long—

The New Mormon Poetry | Lewis Home, The seventh day

A new Mormon poetry is beginning to emerge from the shadow of traditional, more bardic Mormon verse. Peeping about in the bright sun, blinking a bit and rubbing its eyes, it shows itself in poems…