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# Two Poems by Christopher Bolin
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/two-poems-by-christopher-bolin/
- Published: 2015-09-30T11:02:44.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:43:01.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected two poems by Christopher Bolin for his series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Joe Pan
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:13 (2014, 2015, part 3)

*Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected two poems by Christopher Bolin for* [*his series*](http://hyperallergic.com/tag/hyperallergic-poetry/) *that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.*

*\* \* \**

![David-Hartt_Interval_I](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/09/david-hartt_interval_i.jpg)

David Hartt, “Interval I” (2014), currently on view in ‘David Hartt: Interval’ at the Art Institute of Chicago (© David Hartt, courtesy Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago, and David Nolan Gallery, New York)

## Litany

I.

The sea-floor volcanoes fusing trash  
as it passes

into archipelagoes

where the birds adapt—

to isolated patterns of themselves or oscillated patterns  
of the windblown trash—and to the sealed bottles

distilling water from themselves—and to  
raising young

in swales

of Easter grass;

II.

the bird-

traps of lost fishermen  
made of ballast stones

in the weeks before a bird appears

when they traced the stones

with light from signal mirrors  
and pictured birds’ bones

highest  
in the fossil seams.

## Badlands II

A train traveling West  
has flies against its Eastern walls

and you will feel them when you go to pray; or

you will stand here, as it passes: where the open doors  
of the empty cars

are frames in a film about hunger; and the oil-

spill crews  
will salvage what they can

with siphons

and test the water by bleeding reeds

in widening arcs  
until they reach you and you

ask them about the oil-fields and they do not respond  
when you tell them the story

they think is about your mother

weaving cardinals into cloth  
whenever wool is stained by blood.

\* \* \*

Christopher Bolin teaches at the College of St. Benedict / St. John’s University (MN) and the low-residency program at the Center for Narrative Practice (MA). His collection of poems, [*Ascension Theory*](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1609381955/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com), was published by the [University of Iowa Press](http://www.uiowapress.org/books/2010-fall/ascension-theory.htm?ref=hyperallergic.com) and named a finalist for the Foreword Reviews “Book of the Year Award.” Christopher is the founder of the literary and arts magazine, [Resistance Journal](http://www.resistancejournal.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com).