Kyphosis

Take my yolk upon you

and learn from me,

for I am meek and lowly in heart…

—Matthew 11:29

It was birthed by

every bend you undertook.

There in your mother’s

garden, hoisting up the ants as

if the Rapture. A three-year-old

reaping angel. Fingering their

antennae as though the strings

of a hydro pole—messages in the

wire you cannot hear

yet somehow see.

You envision its wooden

T, say it sagged

while bidding your father

bon voyage. The encumbrance

from screaming love

into its lines.

The beep while it was busy

was the muse for car alarms.

Vexing to the point when

no one steals or calls again.

Silence isn’t aurum it’s electric.

The backpack with your

textbooks was a station

of the cross—the second—

before the load went

digital. You loathed the ones

who’d crack a novel’s spine—

there inside the bookshop

where you toiled.

Now you’ve knowledge

it’s just a way to

get the inevitable over with.

Language is omniscient

when compressed. Haiku is just

a tome that’s gone erasure. 

They say Issa wrote 3

hundred trillion queues. Sculpture is

the sublimity of our eyes.

The divinity of our hands.

What would you possibly

tell us—if you only had a

single word to share? How to depict

the feather on a stone

which weighs a tonne?

Not the boulder but the plume,

when grief has hefted all

it could have borne,

arced from overuse,

wishing gravity

would ease its burden

while it's light.

Andreas Gripp

September 24, 2026

photograph: Jeff Pachoud / Getty Images