Descend to the misericord,
half-cantilever, half-secret:
a mercy-seat that bears your weight
only if you bend.
Beneath you,
grotesques, green men, grylloi,
foxes with chalices,
apes with miters,
a woodwose curling
in relief.
Above you, a hammerbeam roof
like a ribcage,
rood screen removed,
still haunted.
The angels see your unworthiness,
your entire epistemology.
in the attic
forgotten words
scribbled
on dreams found
in dusty boxes
escaping to
nothing
psycho trash
sharpness we use to hide behind
i’d rather draw blood with my tongue than
use my pointed nails any longer
so the pen pours deep and cutting
ink gushing down the page
razor-fast and faster so it drips
onto my legs wet and cold words
made to feel something
bloody truths and sharpened syllables
lined up and dotted at the end.
Living with you, Ike, is one long tornado-driven hailstorm.
I did not appreciate bullets in my ass and blood on my leather.
Damn lucky my 20-gallon fuel tank wasn’t hit.
My tires scream as cops chase us through Lexington –
west on Main
left on Upper
right on High Street heading home.
How my leaf springs groan under the weight of whiskey.
I slosh when you slam to a stop or swing into a curve;
wheels scrape curbs while my chassis
sways like Marion Davie’s hips.
Touring cars cargo well, but,
Ike, like all your women,
my closed, aluminum body is top-heavy.
One minute you caress me
polish my Dupont Duco blue lacquer paint
change my oil and spark plugs
wash my windows inside and out.
The next minute you devil drive me —
bang the break-pedal to the floorboards
then expect me to plunge into my 48.7 horsepower?
Inertia, Ike!
For now, I’m unstable yet unstoppable.
I’ve got spirit, but a girl needs a little tenderness.
One of these days you’ll miss an apex
and there I’ll be –
one more used up flapper.
rescued our neighbor’s 13-year-old
calling for help when a break-in
occurred where she was babysitting.
finished mowing the grass for our
disabled neighbor when her
husband was away on business.
held me tight the night my
Mom passed in our home
after weeks of hospice.
convinced our daughter it’s
okay to start her new job
after the video on robberies
created unfounded fears.
searched at 3am for a Coke
at a Domnica resort as I lay
clinging to consciousness in
our room from low blood sugar.
stroked my cheeks
locked eyes with mine
telling me he loved me
knowing his time was up.
would jump in swift water
to save that drowning girl.
The sign on the bridge
across the Ohio read
welcome but it was
the cicadas who sang it
so we knew we’d arrived home.
It’s been red vs. blue
for so long we’ve been numbed
and blinded
to the real battle
between the oligarchs in power
and me and you.
Corrupt men
propped up by mountains of bodies,
oil-slicked waters,
flat-top mountains,
landfills, dollars drenched in sweat and tears
hard-fought but easily and gleefully stolen
by those who would claim
they serve in the people’s name.
They raise the temperature
and poison the water.
It doesn’t matter to them
in their conclaves
air-cooled and charcoal-filtered.
They won’t feel the effects of their actions
and they care nought about the generations
they leave behind.
They spin their divisive threads of rhetoric
and keep spears pointed at each other
our heads barely above the water
struggling so hard to keep afloat
we don’t notice the water they dump in.
This country
once so proud and acclaimed
now cannot even claim
the United in its name.
He thumbs the namesake Bible
on his knee: leather smooth as a drone’s wing.
His kind of Jesus hangs clean
as it did in the 50s like a chrome fin
in stained glass, anachronistically
gilded—meek, they call
the one they believed cracked
the whip in the temple,
the one who wept blood
in the gardens of the Levant.
This Jesus doesn’t sweat.
Doesn’t taste of dust
or cheap wine.
Doesn’t kneel in the dirt
with the woman from Samaria—
only points, pristine,
from a megachurch stage
where the collection plates
gleam like missile casings.
On the cracked leather couch,
the man clicks his tongue
And tweets, peace,
a dry rattle in the ribs of mountains
where the olive trees hold their breath
like mothers in a market line.
We’ve grown used to the rhythm:
security, freedom, fire.
All words gone slick
with overuse—
another a cross
on a campaign lapel.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
the preacher used to say,
as if peace were a passive thing,
a quiet room, a closed door.
Not the wild work of mercy—
And when they would lift the cup,
I tasted only metal.
This is the new liturgy:
the body of Christ,
crushed like limestone
under the boot of empire.
I want to believe in a different Jesus—
the one who’d turn his back
on the marble steps,
walk past the armored cars,
kneel in the broken field
to cradle a child’s shoe
full of consecrated glass.
The one who’d say:
Put down the stone.
Love thy neighbor.
Bring the little children…
like those stories once told me
in the 90s–during the beginning
of the middle of The Fall.
But the stones are too many now.
The earth won’t absorb
all the plastic, the diesel, the ghost-scent
of pomegranate groves
as three continents away
we watch the weatherman’s map—
and chew our bread,
stained gold with margarine.
False and forgiving gold.
Gold that glints like the clip
on the President’s pen
as he signs the heavens shut
to us.
