Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, has authored twelve books, including the four poetry collections. His memoir in prose poems Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, published by Third World Press with an introduction by Haki Madhubuti, has been described by Mindbender Review of Books as “the most improbable and intriguing personal account by a writer published in 2022, but quite possibly the most ingeniously imagined memoir by any writer in any given year.” His fifth poetry collection — Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith — is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.
O Antiphons
O tower
Joan the Maid jumped to flee
the tower of her future, or
was she seeking an end to future?
She died later in the fire that
burned away her cloth covering and
showed her a girl, just that.
Tower of power.
Babel tower. Leaning tower.
Tower of London. Water tower.
The Tower of the Five Orders.
This tower is 66-feet-tall with a conical dome
as much as nine-feet-thick,
is a twenty-four-angled polygon tomb,
is a map of congresses along its lines,
myths and gossip,
is the cup for the fire
to light the Silk Road way on fog nights,
elegant as the law and the prophets,
righteous as the scribes and Pharisees,
true as the smallest letter or
the smallest part of a letter.
When you say “yes,” mean “yes.”
When you say “no,” “no.”
I will go from my tower of breathing
down to the sea, sliding down, quietly
— chin, nose, eye brows — to eternity,
a final baptism.
Tower Twin. Tower Twin. Belltower.
Clocktower. All along the watchtower.
An ancient spirit entered
the rock, the cement, the brick of
the Loop tower, turned into solid soul.
And I saw sand and scrub, black water.
On the outside of the monument tower,
the name of every sinner and saint
for everyone to see,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.
Eiffel Tower. Tower Butte. Tribune Tower.
The Tower ravens. The princes in the Tower.
Tower of Jericho. Tower of Silence.
From the tower of the tree, a memory:
That time in the alley
when they told him they wanted
to sit on his right and on his left.
That time he told them to drink the cup of blood.
That time when they told him
the fishes and loaves were tasty.
Read the scripture inside scripture,
earth’s salt, painful rapture,
the four-letter name,
a mansion with many rooms.
O beauty
It came to pass in those days, the
king made a feast and displayed his
riches in the palace garden with
white, green and blue hangings,
fastened with fine linen.
The pillars were marble. The beds
were of precious metals. The walkway
was marble, white and black and blue
and red. And they drank from jeweled
gold vessels.
On the seventh, he commanded his
seven chamberlains to bring the
queen to the garden, wearing her
crown royal and nothing else
to show the people and princes her beauty.
And she refused. And his anger burned.
And he told the wise ones to tell him to
renounce the woman. They did. And he did.
She who was queen went away. The
king chose a new maiden.
Later, at the tent flap,
she who had been queen laughed
at the stirring in her womb.
O Dinah Mo
O Dinah Mo,
enigma of noon in Corrugate City
where the river of fire flows for eleven months
and then, for a month, it is
a dust highway for the communion of saints
— Lamanites and Jaredites, Mulekites and Nephites.
You can run.
You can hold your hands high.
You can read between the lines.
O Dinah Mo, bleacher prophetess,
consort of Billy Amalek,
centerfielder for the Kingdom of Heaven Pirates,
holding the metal baseball
with green-blue crust of oxidation
and, in the other hand,
as scepter, a fossil leg bone.
Behold! The orange Popsicle into the concrete crack,
melted, staining the cosmos. The baby is presented.
Evening light at harvest.
As undertakers kiss in the
back row of the long, shadowed
Hosea Park church, bundled winter teens
in front rows with mothers and
aunts, by the casket, shoulder to
elbow in creaking front pews, repeat
priest prayers to Nuestro Padre and
Nuestro Senor. Madre de Dios.
O Dinah Mo, the Christian Brothers are on the run.
Dominicans and Franciscans debate in their cells.
Behold! The soil priest eats dirt. The wind priest
mountaintops his blood and bones, hermit of the air.
Kneel at the foot of the altar with the flaming priest.
Bow your head in muttered Latin responses.
O Dinah Mo, the snick of blade,
the thwick, thwack of sword on neck, botched cutting.
Buffet religion, breakfast faith.
Beatific mission, salvific salon.
Blessed sinners.
The consecration of the house.
Thus, angel’s bread this day
is made our bread.
O wondrous gift, indeed.
O Dinah Mo, a restless soul
entered the rock, the cement, the brick.
O Dinah Mo, on the seventh day,
the king commanded his seven chamberlains
to bring the queen to the garden,
wearing her crown royal and nothing else.
This was in the Land of Scorpions.
O Dinah Mo, read the scripture inside scripture.
Pantomime the pain. Each is an open door
in a mansion with many rooms.
You are locked in.
On the swing-set in 1956,
sister and brother rise high,
sing full-throat songs the nuns taught
as if to fly to a soft caress heaven.
Today, tonight, and forever.
A galaxy of broken bottle glass, beautiful and sharp.
A blind flight to the continent of future.
A scratch on perfect toddler skin.
A hunger for breathing.
O Dinah Mo, have mercy. I am dying.
Everything is gone. I have nothing to eat.
O Dinah Mo, Larry entered his Gethsemane,
David chose his gunmetal hope.
Looking for a bright flame.
Looking for a guiding star.
Looking for a smooth path.
Looking for a shepherd.
O Dinah Mo, Heaven-Help-Us had a fixed
abode in a world of trouble and sang bad blues
in morning sun on the second-floor back porch
to community consternation.
Pestilence, burning, blasting.
Dust on the tongue.
Scab, madness, blindness, astonishment.
Locust, worms and all crawling insects.
O Dinah Mo, he knows it is time to go
— breathy behind saloon neons, embraceless,
in dark as whale guts, murky as the lagoon —
down clumsy misconceived streets
and past the loading dock with its rot fruit,
eaten by vermin and stinking to high heaven.
O Dinah Mo, the saint bound himself to
solid ground, to gale speed, to
lightning flash, to fire power, to
profound sea, to wide stone — to
what was before and after, within and
without, above and beneath, to
the right and to the left and at heart.
What needs to be seen needs to be seen.
O anointed one!
Show me the old town, anointed one.
Show me the kiva in the dusty old
pueblo where I cannot go up the
ladder and down the ladder to the fire.
I sweat secular sweat out here in the sun.
I know my place.
Show me the golf course on sacred
land, sold to buy other, more sacred
cliff and rock. The hotel, the casino
land, sold to buy holy lost dirt.
Let me walk past the pueblo clown as she
makes fun of me and distracts me from
reverenced pictographs. No fences
here, only the weight of belief.
Let me fail to notice the handprints on
the cave wall, high up, far above the floor of
the canyon. The mountain cat seeking shade.
In another place, I will sketch on
many pieces of paper a complex
belief system with maize at the
center for those who are people of corn.
I spiritual Chicago brick and cement with
weeds rising in the cracks. Fool such as I.
O spear
Angelo Roncalli.
She said: The Pope’s name?
My name too, Hambone said.
Spear of mortal pain.
Sea-monster bone, warrior mistress.
The name of the spear.
I am Sarah and Noah, said Hambone.
I am the shepherd David and the king.
I am Nobody in the cave of Poseidon’s son.
Barbed belly spear.
Gap-tooth spear.
Backfoot county sheriff,
hip-point farm boy witness.
Spear of mortal death.
She said she had no parents,
just the sisters at the Home.
She was called the Moon and the Stars.
Written in the Book of Losses,
bloody crimson.
The way of prudence.
I am called Hambone
for the galaxy beyond the Milky Way.
I am Huck and Emma and the Joad mother.
I am the line. I am the link.
I am here to there.
I am here to stay,
like the shaft through the skin.
The path of wisdom.
The hope of the nations.
I am Walt and I am Emily.
I am the Song of Songs.
I am Job on his hill of shit.
I am Mohammedan angels.
Ginsberg’s? she asked.
God’s.
The Galway Review 
To give credit where it’s due — One of these poems, “O Dinah Mo,” was originally published by the Ballast Journal. A second, “O anointed one,” was first in my book “Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith,” published by Kelsay Books in September.