print previewback DEVON WALKER-FIGUEROA
The Blood’s Unwritable Psalm
My body is just the story it tells
in order to be true. The moon goes on
enlarging the ballad of its fall, pretending
it’s innocent as a cloak
draped over a virgin’s shoulders. I was once
virginal before I was tangible, and my voice
swaddled me in what I’ve learned to call
refrain. If I’d been born in the shape of
a boy, I might have been
named after trees so old
they are only the sounds we make for them. 
Devon Walker-Figueroa, “The Blood’s Unwritable Psalm” from Philomath: Poems. Copyright © 2021 by Devon Walker-Figueroa. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Milkweed Editions.
The Blood’s Unwritable Psalm
Gallowed Be 
Of Gut & Gold
Horticulture or Eternity
The Hunted
Paradise Lust
Philomath