Seattle Night Prayer
The price of the tacos will go unnamed. The alley bodies in prayer & their simple sanity. Love in the eyes of a woman in a lavender shawl, all around her the world & its infinite friendships. The outside seething with complex orations. The earth in its language surrounding a timid brain, a ceiling draped in white plastic wisteria. A candle on every table. I listened to a man rant out his shift, every one of his apologies refused absolutely.
Eliot Cardinaux is a poet, pianist, composer, and translator working at the intersection of the lyric and improvised music. The author of On the Long Blue Night (Dos Madres, 2023), Eliot has produced over a dozen albums, including American Thicket, Sweet Beyond Witness, Pavane, and Out of Our Systems. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in music from the New England Conservatory, and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Eliot’s poems and translations have appeared in journals such as California Quarterly, Tupelo Quarterly, Meridian, Jacket2, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He is also the sole founder and editor of The Bodily Press.