After the tinder
behind my eyes—
the unsealed Ark,
our jealous God’s
pitiless light,
after the pleas
of please, the temple’s
torn veil, a body
lowered from
a soiled cross—
I wake to you
drawing my face:
Don’t move, you say.
You’ll ruin the mood.
Postdrome
Michael Shewmaker
Michael Shewmaker is the author of Penumbra (2017), winner of the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. Born in Texarkana, Texas, he is the recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner fellow. His recent poems appear in Best American Poetry, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and elsewhere. He lives in San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Emily.