Haley Hodges And Not Your Garments Lord, Lord this my heart full of secrets, seeds I know you did not send—Lord, I cannot rend. If I am choked, therefore, by weeds, I will not ask for a mended garden, I won’t beg your holy pardon at scythe’s end. These were difficult to bury, so little loam left … Read more
Year of The Restless at the kitchen table, year of our Lord twenty twenty-four, year my words marched backward into my mouth and forward only when forgotten, year of the idiotic Stanley tumbler, year of the subtle but far reaching machinations of neo-Marxism depending on who you ask, year of our lady of fuck around … Read more
No Record of Wrongs Love does keep a record of some things— your solitary walks in Coln Saint Aldwyn’s, a precise curl of Virginia Creeper tendrils, vermillion in autumn, the way you carefully smelled horses’ necks beneath the mane back home, velveteen crushes of cornhusks lashed to lampposts Love notes you’ve yet to find a … Read more
Belshazzar I never knew myself to have a Persian beard, now, This is odd, this will need some explanation So too the crown and concubines and all these Half-drunk vessels from the house of God Isn’t it 2023 or 2022—was I not, just now, Pulling up in a Subaru or whatever it is I Get … Read more
Advent We have endured long in the dark. It is a burden (A magic? A madness?) particular To us. Long endurance of darkness is not light, But speaks of a belief that light’s radiance Merits enduring long in the dim we know— In the dusk we are. The world is a bone Full of Christ-marrow; … Read more
Faking It When Cleopatra rolled Out of the rug, she thought: Don’t worry! Even if I do not enjoy your performance, You will enjoy mine—a lot. I’d like to credit myself As an actress, but the truth About men is: I’ve yet To meet one unwilling To believe he is a singularly Exceptional lover—yeah, baby. … Read more
Kyrie Rotten fruit, rotten root. Hands up Don’t shoot. Kyrie eleison. By the waters of Columbine, of Blacksburg, of Newtown, by the Waters of Parkland and Uvalde, There I sat down beneath my desk (Don’t shoot) to weep. Christe eleison. My soul to take. Kyrie eleison. My soul to keep. Gloria There is no No … Read more
The Sacred Mundane 1 We might say with confidence that the world is a lovely catastrophe—paradise buried in a rubbish heap; devilish, angelic, perishing, precious, priestly, proud; one home to the light that is oil and the water that is darkness, this poor dazzling Earth a jar cracking with the strain of their dueling dual … Read more
Make of me, too, a microcosm Make of me, too, a microcosm— Merger, marry, manifest As the bridegroom, as the stone-melted Heart. Move but do not remove me, for monsters Maraud in madness here, and we meet Mettle to mettle about the place. But you— Magnificent as mystery, as morning, you Are mooring the ship … Read more