Marcus Wicker is the author of Maybe the Saddest Thing, selected for the National Poetry Series, and Silencer. His many honors include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. Wicker serves as a visiting professor of English at Michigan State University.

Photograph by Elizabeth Randolph.

Prayer on the Subdivision

by Marcus Wicker

Then I graduate to a four-digit mortgage inside an ornate gate. Me
& two more mes: patent attorney & career soldier. A trinity of clean-
ass SUVs parked beside matching beige tri-levels—proof we own
at least 1/3 the Dream, though my Range is only leased. The tender
kin who invented that adage about good fences must have been black

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