by Bud Sturguess

O Dove in impossible flight
Land not your tender feet
on any dreary thing,
on anything that lies and steals,
on any shoulder of any tyrant carved in stone
But for me please, 
Dove so bright,
upon this wretched one descend – 
I am trapped in Gath 
I was born with a bite mask over my mouth
From my mother’s womb, I tore
with a knife in my hand and a scar on my cheek
Upon me descend,
though You’d refuse to touch the grime
of things that die

Bud Sturguess was born in the small cotton-and-oil town of Seminole, Texas. He now lives in his “adopted hometown,” Amarillo. Sturguess has self-published several books, his latest being the novel Sick Things. He lives on disability benefits and collects neckties. Sturguess’s work appears in New Pop Lit, Duck Duck Mongoose, as well as the upcoming print anthologies Mid/South from Belle Point Press and The Daily Drunk’s From Parts Unknown.