Tyree Daye
Neuse River

 

Tell them not to go

to the banks alone.

 

Tell them where

they can drink

 

without watching

over shoulders.

 

Tell them drowning

is third on your list

 

of concerns.

First is lie down,

 

second,  come here.

Even the water

 

I was baptized in

isn’t safe.

 

I knew God

was a man

 

because he put              

a baby in Mary

 

without her

permission.

 

 
Found In Volume 46, No. 05
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Tyree Daye
About the Author

Tyree Daye is an Assistant Professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of two poetry collections: River Hymns (APR, 2017) and Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020). Daye is a Cave Canem fellow, and he has won the 2019 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellowship, 2019 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-In-Residence at UC Santa Barbara, and a 2019 Whiting Writers Award.