Religion

 

A white horse in the tar rain.

Coastal wind tore us from sins

while we cringed in our paralysis.

We visited the old neighborhood,

but we knew life could go back to joy.

To find joy the world melted,

clawed our skinny biceps, trapped us,

made us what we should have been

on the beach with white horses.

You saw them too before they vanished.

Before the driver rushed us back in the car,

up the coast—a moment to breathe the salt,

the sweet real, sweet sweet real,

alone with its bones and sticks.

 

 

To Love

 

When the priests led me under New England pines

in beads and capes stitched from feral hides,

they whittled the tip of a sawn limb

to gently press up through ribs

and the ventricular hollow, and on that spit

their meaty hands dipped me in the river

and as promised I felt nothing ever again

until you found me.