Pierre Mask, chosen as one of the winners of the James Tate Poetry Chapbook Prize (2019), out now with SurVision Books

 

“By vast pains we mine into the pyramid; by horrible gropings we come to the central room; with joy we espy the sarcophagus; but we lift the lid—and no body is there!—appallingly vacant as vast is the soul of a man!”

—Herman Melville, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, Book XXI, Tidings from the Meadows