CONFESSIONAL, by jim coppoc

There is an order to unloading,

a patterned release:

the words, the gestures,

the box, so like a womb

or coffin.

Go in peace.

This poem originally appeared in the funky and ecologically sound Volume 4 of The Ampersand Review.

Jim Coppoc makes his living through some murky but evolving balance of poetry, pedagogy, playwriting and performance. He teaches in the Department of English and the American Indian Studies Program at Iowa State University, and in the low-residency MFA in Writing program at Chatham University. Current and forthcoming books include Blood, Sex & Prayer (Fractal Edge Press); Bearing the Pall (One Small Bird Press); Reliquary (Fractal Edge Press); Manhattan Beatitude, 1997 (One Small Bird Press); Tribal Ways of Knowing and Being: a Pedagogy Reader (Mammoth Publications); and Council Fires: a Digital Sourcebook for American Indian Studies (National Social Science Press).