In the mineral dark, this mazeand matrix map a funky elation,architecture devised in slowmotion, where tendrils bendtoward one another, tipto tip, diverge, tangle, gatherand by vibration improviseboth call and response. Thus, risethe molecular wilds. Their motherrichness. Lord, let my lipskiss that into which I’ll descendone day. Bury me and bury sorrow.Star orbit and rot all a relation,all a truth continuously ablaze.
Root Prayer
Patrick Rosal
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Copyright © 2026 by Patrick Rosal.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Patrick Rosal is the author of five books and winner of the William Carlos Williams Award and Lenore Marshall Prize. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and the Fulbright Research Scholar program. He is inaugural Campus Director of the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University-Camden, where he has also served as Interim Director of the MFA Program and is a Distinguished Professor of English.
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APR has continued uninterrupted publication of The American Poetry Review since 1972, and has included the work of over 1,500 writers, among whom there are nine Nobel Prize laureates and thirty-three Pulitzer Prize winners.
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