Sustained by Faith

by RYAN CLARK

for the early settlers of Olustee, Oklahoma

Search the river for a sign of you
and find mud that shifts where a foot
fits to the bank. Our gods came
to meet us here, found the churches
we built among the rust we homesteaded.
There is a spiritual labor in
reforming land as we wish to see it,
a method of reason founded in a need
to hope for something after.

Greer held its head underneath the water
of the Red and its forks, returned to the day
a renewed breath unfrozen of doubt.

This assembled fort is a group portrait
where early settlers gathered among
edges of fear and rationed time,
holding each other with crossed buildings
hung over vast rivers of horizon.

The fish at the river move unbaptized
among the feet of a faithful stock,
of those in fellowship who reach
toward a mass swirling with a full love,
and here is a union trying to make a life
in a hard vice of drought. Here
among floodwaters a child talking
to a god directly above her. Such is the care
we need to feel safe in an uncontrolled day,
a vision against the crush of expanse.

Ω

Ryan Clark writes his poems using a unique method of homophonic translation. He’s the author of Arizona SB 1070: An Act (Downstate Legacies), How I Pitched the First Curve (Lit Fest Press), and Suppose / a Presence (Action, Spectacle). His poetry has appeared in such journals as DIAGRAM, Cherry Tree, The Offing, Interim, and Copper Nickel. A Texoma native, he currently lives in North Carolina with his partner and two cats.

Afiwa Afandalo is a NYC research-based visual artist from the Bronx and Togo. Through her art, she tells the beautiful and complex stories of Black girls and Black women from across the globe. Her work has been shown in magazines such as the Black In Colors Magazine at Lehigh University and the Furrow Magazine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.