I Surrendered
Christian J. Collier
For a long time,
there’s been a little bit of Devil within me.
The pronged tip of a beak
jutting steady through the lotioned tapestry of my skin.
In my father’s basement, the Internet made me love my first sin.
The flesh on the screen caused mist to march
above my blood & gristle.
In that room, I disappointed my boneless, voiceless God nightly
by not being strong enough to abstain my beckon. My God,
I feared the rapture I could cull from phalange & palm.
Their then new music droned
through my pores, announcing to any local ear
the way I was damned. No matter what quiet charm I’d murmur,
I couldn’t abandon the gospel of my own hand.
Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, TN. He is the author of Greater Ghost (Four Way Books, 2024), and the chapbook The Gleaming of the Blade, the 2021 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, December, and elsewhere. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2022 Porch Prize in Poetry and the 2020 ProForma Contest from Grist Journal.
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