ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Okaji holds a BA in history, served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, toiled as a university administrator, and no longer owns a bookstore. His honors include the 2022 Slipstream Press Annual Chapbook Prize, the 2021 riverSedge Poetry Prize, and, at the age of nine, the Bar-K Ranch Goat-Catching Championship. He was recently diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer, and lives, for the time being, in Indiana with his wife, stepson, and cat. His first full-length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises, will be published by 3: A Taos Press in the fall of 2024 (not posthumously, he hopes). His poems may be found in Book of Matches, Threepenny Review, Only Poems, Vox Populi, Shō Poetry Journal, The Big Windows Review, The Night Heron Barks, Indianapolis Review, and other venues.

Even the Darkness

We must, she said, 

open ourselves. 

Like desert

to the night 

sky, like a baby's 

mouth. Or words

in the unread book. 

I nod, say 

I understand, turn, 

close the door. 

Even the darkness 

knows better.