Darius Antwan Stewart

WORSHIPPING THE WRONG GODS

"All my life I've worshipped
the wrong gods"
     —Louise Glück
 
Daddy forever noticed the discipline
of birds, how perfectly their lines angled
to a fine point at the end, and remarked
 
that birds in flight are more in line
than any of the rest of us.
But always one near the back veered
 
too far left and the whole formation crumbled.
Get back in line, he’d grumble
as though it was the bad seed in the family.
 
And the bird tightened, the formation
framing a patch of sky so flawlessly
it might have fallen, a gift, at my father’s feet.
 
Someday I will stand at his gravesite,
remembering him because of this letter
of storm petrels flocking
 
to the Mediterranean, some mapless country
only the sky will lead them to, envious that
not even the brow of the sun could melt their wings.

Date of Birth:	November 27, 1979
Location:	Austin, Texas
Occupation:	Graduate Student
Email:	dariusantwan@hotmail.com
Publications:	New Millennium Writings, The Phoenix, Sketches, The Red River Review, Adagio Verse Quarterly, Our Time Is Now, The 13th Warrior Review, Poetry Motel, The Seattle Review, Knoxville Bound: An Anthology of Knoxville Writers
Awards:	The University of Tennessee-Knoxville (College of Arts and Science) Margaret Artley Woodruff Prize in Poetry, Knickerbocker Poetry Prize; Eleanora Burke Prize for Non-fiction; the Ann Hight Gore Thesis Prize for Worshipping the Wrong Gods: Poems
Other:	2004 June Fellow of the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets; James A. Michener Fellow in poetry and fiction of the University of Texas-Austin Michener Center For Writers MFA Program