Two Poems by Joshua McKinney

Faith (after Alain Bosquet)

God tempts me in my language.

           As I reject Him, I feel remorse.

He is that within me which is

           repulsed by the smallness in me. 

I create God to limit myself.

           I know my limits. My poems do not. 

Void

Not a cloud at noon today,

           and the eye sinks into depthless blue.

I lie here in this soft grass

           afraid I’ll fall upward and drown.

But look there! Rising from the abyssal air, see what

           that hawk has done to the sky!

Note from the poet:

These poems are English approximations of sijo (she-joe), a traditional Korean form that originated during the Goryeo dynasty (918-1392) and is still being written today. Syllabic in structure, the three lines of a sijo are broken into two hemistiches. There is a shift at the beginning of the third line similar to the volta of a sonnet. The basic form is as follows:

1st line              3          4          4 (or 3) 4

2nd line             3          4          4 (or 3) 4

3rd line              3          5          4          3

For those interested in the form, I recommend The Bamboo Grove: An Introduction to Sijo, edited and translated by Richard Rutt.

Joshua McKinney’s fifth book of poetry, Sad Animal (2024), won the inaugural John Ridland Poetry Prize from Gunpowder Press. His work has appeared in such journals as Boulevard, Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, New American Writing, and many others. His other awards include The Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize, The Dickinson Prize, The Pavement Saw Chapbook Prize, and a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative Writing. He is co-editor of the online ecopoetics zine, Clade Song.

24 November 2025