Ryan Teitman

I randomly found this Indiana University MFA student's poetry and I'm really happy I did:

Prayer to Saint Anthony, Finder of Lost Things

I have lost: churches cupped in my hands, the moon drowned in a glass, pocket watches tied to tree stumps, watchdogs swimming in lakes of whiskey, hungry fingers to the night’s saw teeth. Keep those. Please find my hearts, those thousand knotted plums fled from my body. Return the small one in the pit of my stomach, worn smooth as marble. Return the one in my left hand that beats with the stroke of a hammer. Return the cilia-pricked one in my ear that hears the memories of animals. Return the one in my knee that sings like a bellows. The one in my wrist that stutters my pulse like a skipping record. The one in my right hand that spins sand into glass. The one in my eye that plucks the streets from the city. The one in my tongue that shakes the sea from the shoreline. Return the one in my heart that builds ships in a bottle, with its small surgeon hands.

Ode, Elegy, Aubade, Pslam

1

The songbird that escapes

from a burning house

will build its nest

in the shape of a cage.

2

This is one thing

we know: song begs

for the places that make it

grow from seed to starling,

3

places that put the heart's hemlock

in an empty rowboat

and heave it from the shore.

4

We only praise what we cannot

keep: violin strings berried with rain,

teacups overflowing with brandywine,

radios sickened with static.

5

Glass tossed out with the tide

will come back smoother and stranger,

but never to the same person.

6

This is something we want

to know. The woman in love

never touches her ears.

7

The man in his house is always lost

without her.

8

Morning pulls light

from the dark like a boy

hoisting a trout from the lake

by its clean, pink gills.

9

When the woman escapes

from a burning house

she will know the path of the wind,

10

how it writes its scripture

in peach blossoms blown

into a baby's empty pram.

11

She'll feel it compose its words

against her body, against the night,

against the water, in an endless, artless psalm.