When I first read Thirst by Patrick Carrington, I was blown away. His verse is free, but tight. The images, the language, the spirit, it all flows like a fountain of holy water. I’m not sure what the state of his soul his, but I can take a guess at his background based on his poems. There are gems in Thirst. Lots of them. “First Lessons In Grace” is just one of those. And I love the lines

like that gang at the sacred supper
that hung from our dining room wall.

First Lessons In Grace

One night in a red pool, or purple
maybe, it was over. It all seemed
so quick and simple. Dusk, death.
And later, even forgiveness.

A priest took the bottle from father’s
clutching hand. With the sign
of the cross, he eyed the ceiling
as if watching the ghost of his project
rise and seep into heaven
through cracks in the plaster.

I had always thought it complicated,
becoming holy. In the end, perhaps
whiskers and wine are all you need,
like that gang at the sacred supper
that hung from our dining room wall.
Maybe that’s why daddy buried
his razors and uncorked the port,
because he understood salvation. But

I think the ticket to forever might be more
along the lines of an ample supply
of 100-watt bulbs, the sheer volume
of light to discern differences -
grin from grimace,
venial from mortal,
tonight from the rest of your life.

I’m sure I could use that improved
discrimination. Of aura, of sin,
the weight of sudden change.
Even something as simple as color.
I question whether the drops
of a bleeding heart are really red

at all. That night, they looked more
burgundy in the uncertainties
of sundown, like the wine bruises
he gave my mother, still clear as
her arm tensed in a cloud of smoke.

Thirst is easily the best chapbook of poems I’ve read all year and poems like “First Lessons In Grace” are the reason why. Every poem in the chapbook is that good. Some are better. None of any less crafted. Patrick Carrington takes religious poetry to a new level. In fact, the poems are so full of poetic craft that it is a sin to refer to them as religious for they are much loftier than that and deserve much more divine love.