Mitchell Glazier

Saints, Tonguing


The boy will burn his leopard coat.
A curry of heaven, the muscle of a wish.

And what of the honeysuckle,
sewing their faces into lush

roadside?           (Deep breath. Just a little—)
The flesh is a wilderness. Come morning

the juicyfruit moon will sash its velvet
curtain. Their eyes, hardened as wish

stones, skimmed. The lake's blue cool
lover. My dolls are always happy, the boy tongues

over the saint's lips, then down over the inked pistols,
draped over the thinnest wings.


Mitchell Glazier was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Adroit Journal, on the Editors’ List for the 2015 and 2016 Adroit Prize for Poetry, and in Dialogist. He is currently enrolled in the MFA program at Columbia University.