St. James Parish Church

Picture of a black boy drowning
on the seat cushion, Latin prayers
for deliverance, revival. Curled up
spider hanging from the smoke of
incense, myrrh. Looking the picture
of death, the mirror of all religion. A
cocoon frozen to the window, far away
a child drowns who has no race. We curl
ourselves into tangled smoke. And all that
can be heard is whispering in a long dead
tongue.

Love Song

I was a blood clot and you were a fast food drive thru

I was grated cheese and you were lactose intolerance

I was dysphoria and you were the trans body

I was amphetamines and you were Elvis Presley

I was Adolf Hitler and you were legions of anonymous victims

I was America and you were the working poor

I was Golgotha and you were the wounded Christ

I was a birthday party and you had witnessed Jehova

I was a scholar and you were my lingering faith in God

I was Utopia and you were quintessential unfulfilment

I was fake news and you were the greater western world

I was atomic death and you were a Japanese sailor

I was Melville’s hope and you were the reading public

I was cacophany and you were my ignorant pride

I was obscenity and you were a spurious child

I was Apollo and you were the truth about war

I was Apocalypse and you were inevitable decay

An Effigy of Mary, Queen of Scots

Give me back to the land.

absentia luminos quest//lying in the shadow of//a dilapidate villa//D.C.
yellow with Charlotte Perkins//Gilman//quiet now, figurant//martyr
belief is//the stan of falsity//opaque my//body in //mass graves//in-
definite detainment//walking the daze//in time square//held hands
with the//dispossessed//in highland park//we were the secret
garden//kissed quietly//to trespass on catholicism//the blue ride
from which//the world displaces//envy//i would meet you after
the shuttle bus//abandon//hallmark ritual//where the student
bonfire took the lives of//the ignorant//a grecian ode//a torrent
of rebellion