Elegies

Ode to Bulk by Christopher McCurry


Ode to the big dumb
jock who loves the lord. 

Ode to surplus. 

Ode to big box stores. 
Ode to costco and seven hundred 
and thirty-six coffee filters. 

Ode to big screen TVs,
two, even three, sometimes
four monitors to a computer. 

Ode to no such thing 
as too much praise. 

Ode to King Size, yes 
to piling on, to beefing up,
to ramping, layering 
layer upon layer as in
first a t-shirt, then a Jersey 
and later a uniform
finally a medal or two. 

Ode to might and mass. 

Ode to the word Supercarrier
but more for the roughage 
of the earth that sustains. 

Ode to all the ordinary days, 
all the ordinary people. 

Ode to getting all you want 
to having all you need 
when it’s needed. 

Ode to snow and it’s slow gathering. 

Christopher McCurry grew up in the small town of Paris, Kentucky. In the seventh grade he entered one of his poems in a contest and won a medal. He's since lost the medal but still remembers the poem. His poetry has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and featured on NPR's On Point as a Best Book of 2016 for his chapbook of marriage sonnets Nearly Perfect Photograph. His poetry collection is Open Burning (Accents Publishing, 2020).  A graduate of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College and a high school English teacher, he spends his time playing board games, skateboarding, and going on adventures with his daughter Abra. In 2015, Christopher co-founded Workhorse, a publishing company and community for working writers. He believes everyone should write poems and that everyone can. 


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