Zachariah Claypole White is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator, originally from North Carolina. He holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where he was a Jane Cooper Poetry Fellow. His poetry and prose have appeared in or are forthcoming from Southeast Review, The Baltimore Review, and The Rumpus, amongst others. Zachariah has received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and his awards include Flying South's 2021 Best in Category for poetry as well as nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Zachariah teaches at the Community College of Philadelphia and the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Find him on Instagram.
OCD SONNET #.7
god i hate airports sometimes i say flying
but really it’s airports the emptiness
of crowds the waiting god i hate the waiting
the weight of impatience piled across suitcases
the local time is both hand and ticket
the woman boarding with no luggage
but a ragged mandolin and what if we all
carried music into the sky—music and maybe
one change of clothes—music which is perhaps
another word for prayer though i don’t want
us to be closer to god just a melody like wrens
in terminal rafters or how last night someone stole
the jasmine plant straight from its pot on jeeva's porch
all the dirt scattered like herrings down her stairs.
ERIN SAYS THE TREES ARE DYING
Listen—I hope there is snow
in my grandmother’s garden,
that the new owners tend
it well, allow the elderberries
their slow trespass,
pick the strawberries
only a day too soon.
The world will continue
I believe this.
Today geese rose from the river
as if in awe of their own flight;
every banker’s knee
was bloody with delight
at the forest’s wet floor
and, between headstones
unweeded, the grass began
its tender ascent.
WHAT WILL THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE?
—turn phone to portrait mode to view properly
OCD SONNET #.10
The throat lets in anxiety and smoke more out of habit
than spite the stomach welcomes both with empty plates
the hands are distracted too busy searching through coats
or checking departure times to notice that every name
is a flowering wound in our conversation even the light here is distant
racing to completion most days i don’t mind—no that’s a lie
—most days the doors are unlocked and the coffee pot half-full
but today as jeeva’s father lights the stove allspice crusts
like week-old snow against his ring and i remember chuck—dead
three years now—preparing thanksgiving turkey he must
have woken hours before us spent those first morning silences
piling hollow bones on the kitchen table stitching the bird’s
herb-soaked skin with devotions so gentle none of us
could tell where the knife first touched.