19. Täuschung

Poetry
Written By Joseph Kidney

by Joseph Kidney

Surrendering and profit, what is meant  

by yield—as when I turn my back to you 

I have no need (not of you) to defend. 

How did I become both halves of this con-

spiracy of persuasion? A breath comes 

in and leaves depleted (yellow, or none,

or few). The you that is an I that frames

how one should think and feel a certain way

as if there were not a species of hope 

so devastating because final, so 

veiled like the moonlight which is full of sleep.


I am yielding again, like a summer’s fog 

to foliage. Again like someone who 

fished in a mirage and threw the catch back.

Joseph Kidney

Joseph Kidney has published poems in Best Canadian Poetry, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, The Ex-Puritan, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed (in Arabic translation), and forthcoming in The Iowa Review. He won a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Poetry, the Poem of the Year award from Arc, the Short Grain Contest from Grain, and The Young Buck Poetry Prize (now the Foster Poetry Prize) from CV2. His book Devotional Forensics was published in 2025 with icehouse poetry. He is currently a lecturer at Stanford University where he completed a PhD on Renaissance drama. He was once poetry editor of Scrivener Creative Review.

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