[God made me a polished stone]

Jory Mickelson

God made me
      a polished stone
in a river aflame
with morning.
Hid me        away
         covered me, said
I have made you
          solely
that I might display
my beauty, which is
another word
         for my glory. Perhaps
for no one else
         but the cutthroat
trout, the stone nymph,
the graveled lives
who rise      with the light.
Your resting,
God said,
         is my pleasure.
I take you
          in, all your
smoothness,
          which trouble has made.
I hold you
         in my right hand,
call all of your
wilderness blessed.

Jory Mickelson (they/he) is a queer writer whose first book, WILDERNESS//KINGDOM, is the inaugural winner of the Evergreen Award Tour from Floating Bridge Press and winner of the 2020 High Plains Book Award in Poetry. Their publications include Court Green, Painted Bride Quarterly, Jubilat, Sixth Finch, Diode, and The Rumpus. They are the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and received fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Winter Tangerine, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. They are a 2022 Jack Straw Writer in Seattle, Washington.