They want to put out the light of God with their mouths—
want, like the sovereignty of the dead, extending just short of flesh. Their
today is broken, they suggest tomorrow, who right now is dancing in the sun with
putty over his eyes. Like an ocean coughing up trash, I’m squeezing God
out from my pores, intention throbbing like a moon. Which of
the jokes I told was best—the difference between man and light?
Light won’t ask for your tongue. Good joke, the taste of lemon. The
official death toll rising while we sleep. It’s crude how they’ve figured out
God, tacky as jugglers at a funeral. Just let me grieve what I’ve lost. They were put
with me fully built, passionless as shoelaces, pitying even my name. To
their credit, they weren’t given what I have: majesty and the heft of a face. They want
mouths like mine that can blow out tiny fires. The mercy of speech. Of sleep. Of they.
2017
Regular
Contemporary
2022
Death & Loss
Racial Injustice
Dialogue
conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie
Metaphor
a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic
Personification
the attribution of human qualities to a non-human thing
Varied syntax
diverse sentence structure