ISSUE: Spring 2019
Suppose we were there for some event
we did not want in on or did. Faith flung
so hard, the cage I felt around me was
no cage, just fear, in a summer-long wither;
an idea much too small for our believin’ at
the time. Suppose bendin’ to kiss his cold,
thick feet, will ever mean anything. How feet
of men, kissed by men, sounds biblical.
How the occasion sought to vandalize our most
underdressed prayers, which aided the gathered,
who were too heavy to be lifted and how
do you say lift when the moment is bent
on your fall? Suppose a god’s eyes fell yellow
in your clean face, where doctors have to
stand there, helpless as you, with all those
futile books stacked in their heads; benighted
by the hour and this deteriorating conclusion.
I think it was Mother Hayes who’d started
closin’ all the blinds and my first thought, “some
folk deal in metaphor subconsciously.” Suppose
all this leavin’ was comin’ and we couldn’t
brace for anything if we wanted, where
somethin’ to hold onto, hurries to mirage itself
into your late pseudo-rescue. Our eyes rained
salt into the dumb silence. The vitals,
a fast stage curtain, falling, where the lead
never makes it back out to bow and there’s
no encore to quell these sobbing ovations.
