Acie Clark

Walt Whitman

A sheet of rain cast over Arkansas
All these woods so wet so just one wren

comes out to call Not a song so much
as a pulsing insistence of Yes I am Yes I am

Yes I am always taking up so much space on a page
All to say for a moment I was here I had this

happening When I felt what I felt there
was also what I had felt What I would have felt once

When I was who I used to be I felt self-sick
for a self I had never been Who I had no voice for

I have a new voice Now once a week I remember
to put a needle in my asscheek This is not only about that

but how you found your voice in a life’s distillation
Selective revision attentive vision of your vision

You were speaking the entire time Your voice becoming
some phrase we could see and say of course Whitman said that

Like a bird in the woods I mean I am still looking
For what I mean The wren is saying

Something else When you picture the sound
Remember there’s two of them now

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Acie Clark is a multi-genre writer from Florida and Georgia, and now based in Arkansas. His work has been supported by the Fine Arts Center, selected for Best New Poets, and anthologized in Divinity in the Margins, I Witness: An Anthology of Documentary Poetry, and The Florida Anthology. His debut collection, Small Talk, was selected by Derrick Austin for the Hub City Press New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and will be published in 2026.