Prayerfully

By R. M. Francis

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Oblique, delicate prayer. Wild,
blind prayer -- spare space
this week’s rosary. Sapphira
says there’s a decade knotted
around the noose for my sin.
Skip Monday’s joyful mystery,
skip Tuesday’s sorrow --
Mother knows we need your
fumble-fingering through beads.
Caress in private grace, like times
spent on the side of the hill, hooked,
shut and ascending. I’m still scaling,
sanctity scarce, set with scars, sights
on sainthood. Oblique, delicate prayer.
Wild, blind prayer -- simple -- spare space
this week’s rosary for my prey. I cannot
utter yet, but I’ll think about it, from the perch,
crouching over the side of almost sleep.

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R. M. Francis is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Wolverhampton. He's the author of two novels, Bella and The Wrenna, published with Wild Pressed Books, and a poetry collection, Subsidence, with Smokestack Books. In 2019 he was the inaugural David Bradshaw Writer in Residence at the University of Oxford and in 2020 was Poet in Residence for The Black Country Geological Society. In 2023 Poe Girl Publishing produced his collection of horror stories, Ameles / Currents of Unmindfulness. His academic research focuses on place-identity in the Black Country and has been published in a number of edited collections; he co-edited the book, Smell, Memory and Literature in the Black Country (Palgrave McMillan) with Professor Sebastian Groes.

Francis' other work on Foreshadow:
Man of Sorrows (Poetry, October 2024)