Water Becomes Bone

The poems of C. Mikal Oness fade in as if they have been speaking all along in the background in a frequency or volume lost to the human ear until their patience runs out and they enter, reverberating, sleek and insistent. With incantatory lines that are addressed more to the self than to an outward entity, Oness calls to mind Stevens’ idea of the ultimate good–to believe in fictions while knowing they are fictions, to find real bliss only in what is infinitely deferred. There is a tension between what we settle for and what we try to squeeze out of fortune; whether we “keep moving for air” or “chant and kick powder,” the results are all we have, and we do not know enough about certainty to deem them fate or divination. This is a book that searches for that certainty through reversal, and the practice of Water Becomes Bone is to pan for its gospel by yielding to contrast, sifting the bright stones in the mix.