States of Poetry - Poems

'The Correct Way' by MTC Cronin | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

States of Poetry - Poems

'The Correct Way' by MTC Cronin | States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

States of Poetry Queensland - Series One

The correct way to drink from a broken cup.
To welcome both dark and light into your house.
To imagine tomorrow.
To pick verbena and red clover.
On the path where nothing will grow.

The correct way to tend the frozen.
To take their sweet throats and swim down into their livers.
To disembowel without touching.
To do what is at stake.
To move from cage to cage.

The correct way to say only some things worth saying.
To recognize the world's mark.
(The shape of conception.)
To feed an apple.
To bruise.

The correct way to close your lips.
To keep a promise.
To remember.
And then, to die in a room.
Or out in the open.

MTC Cronin

Recording

'The Correct Way' begins at 1:44

MTC Cronin

MTC Cronin has published twenty books (poetry, prose poems and essays). Recent collections include In Possession of Loss (Shearsman Books, 2014) and The Law of Poetry (Puncher & Wattmann, 2015), the latter of which was written over two decades.