Tuesday, March 15th - "Library Warriors"

After a long morning spent reading

all about the causes of the French Revolution,

they had promised to meet up outside

to share their light lunch of cheese

and coffee, share any insights

their eyes might have gleaned. Instead,

he wanders into town alone,

buys a pint of beer, sips it by the highway.

Thinks about going in

for confession, before returning

to finish his reading. Guilt

is like that: reading about wars

fought long ago, he realizes

what he's been missing out on. Hopes

she forgives him for his absence, understands

his need to imagine himself at war.

At night, he paces back and forth

the perimeter of his bedroom, smokes

a single cigarette, drinks a bowl of soup

without bothering to taste it. Triumphs

of scale, revolutions of medium.

Before bed, he always likes

to declare war on new countries

in his closet, hoping his empire

can defend itself until morning.

Monday, March 14th - "In the Garden"

Asleep by the stream while the sun shines,

shadows dissemble in the arch of his spine.

Lying still with his back to the wind,

even his most profound thoughts turn to stone.

So, mangy-haired rascal, the child,

the savior. A dream of amber,

a pillar of salt. A glade of rushes left

to lie his head upon at night.

In the morning, find him

rolling round the tree trunk,

searching for a place to climb.

From down here, everything

seems lit by the sun. Curled

in a fetal ball, searching

for a place to rest his bones,

all his visions calcify into tears.

At night, God whispers him

a lullaby, the wind

breathing ripples at his heart, the moon

a knife curved over his weary loins.

Sunday, March 13th - "But She Could Have Left"

They ended up burying her

in the same outfit they found her in,

the faint drops of dried blood

just faintly visible against the backdrop

of the luscious, swarthy ermine fur,

or something meant to resemble it. Standing

in a circle holding hands,

we try to guess at her last words: maybe

do I look fabulous in this,

darlings, or perhaps even

the discarded need to look beautiful,

sometimes, don't they,

dears? We all

squeezed each other's hands,

felt for pulses, danced around

to the reggaeton songs

which she loved to sing

in the shower, deluding herself

into thinking none but the birds

could hear, perhaps thinking

that if she sang enough about love,

someone might come to believe it.

And one man, his hands draped

over his potbelly, puffing at a cigarette

noiselessly, says under his breath

that she deserved it – deserved it,

for palling around with the sort of people

who went shooting all day

and gambling all night, who would trade dreams

for another chance at the dice, another

quenched nightfall for another

hungry morning. Deserved it,

for not having the good sense

to walk out alone, leave him

in the dust, at the first sign

of danger, to accept the marks

around her throat as her one chance

of target practice, marriage as a chain

binding gasps to their silences. Sometimes,

I too believe lust is a game, love

an apocalypse, and wars are fought

only on the battlefields

of lightly stained bathroom tiles.

And if given the chance

to trade danger for bliss,

we all have to make believe

we can somehow make do with both,

lying lazily in the arms

of the springtime's

cruel saplings, the branches above

the only things that we deserve –

deserve to wrap around us

as the sun goes down, all that will ever

hold tightly and refuse to let go.

Saturday, March 12th - "Zion"

In the first year of this brand new revelation,

we still had to work for our fruit. Long summer nights

spent plucking out locusts, mornings woken early

to try to taste rain on our tongues. They promised us

that planting would come easy, in this part

of the world, the praises rolling from our tongues

like milk and honey in the streams. We all

gathered in the town square to dance for rain,

we all whispered breathlessly about its absence.

Only the little boy, running around

in only his loincloth, saw the world

for what it was: another translucent atmosphere,

another red shift of our bodies, a lullaby

stretched out to the length of a season. The boy

swallows, drinks it all in

in the same way we would drink wine:

slowly, first, and then accelerating

rapidly, until finally, even the assembled elders

have no choice but to bow, the illumination

of their shock and awe, just barely enough

to light up the fields and make them grow.

Friday, March 11th - "Slippery Slope"

The coronas of light outside my window

are growing dimmer by the minute, each day

waking to a little less illumination

and a few more furtive prayers. At first

it was barely noticeable, a few

longer shadows in unpainted crevasses

throughout the contours of my face,

and then suddenly, after a disposable dream

about running through beaches

half-naked at dawn, I awake to find

I can barely identify my hands, lying

stock-still on the blank canvas sheets. It's like

when you asked me for a quick

kiss, and at first I thought it would lead

nowhere, the light from our pupils

barely enough to light the way to our spines. Then,

before I knew it, sucking

blood from my vessels, thoughts

from my neurons, breaths

from straight out of the back

of my slicing throat. I was meant

to trade darkness for touches, echoes

for lullabies, exchanges of fluid

to light up our bloodstreams. I've lit up

bodies for less, of course: a few

spare coins, an extra vial

to store my sweat drops. At night,

when the light is about to dim,

I need to feel like the only one

who can reflect moonlight

without creating any puddles on the floor,

too far out of reach to ever be fully cleaned.

Thursday, March 10th - "Homunculus"

 The road to the inside of myself

will not be lined with palm trees. Its pathways steep,

its sentinels guarded, its every step

another word in a long string of prayers. At first,

the body nothing more or less

than its own reflection, a mirror

half-shattered, a canvas tempera painting

of a river tumbling across my back. Then,

a turning, a slaking, a cadaver consuming

aeons and aeons of unspoken curses,

countries we haven't yet visited,

worlds only visible from the back

of our bedrooms, closet spaces

filled with more dead bodies

than we possibly have time to bury. Still,

this harmony, this hymn of our heartbeats,

the sound of the telephone

nearly audible from the bedside,

this constant attempt at finding just

how far away we can get from our skin.

Wednesday, March 9th - "Yahrzeit Candles for My Mother"

My brother says it's silly, lighting candles for the dead.

After all, it's not like they'll know, and besides,

from the point of view of heaven, every candle

must look the same, anyhow. He can't believe in a god

that cares if children remember the anniversary

of their mother's death, if they walk across coals

to prove their pedigree. Still, he eventually says

he'll do it, perhaps just to get my mother

to get onto a less morbid subject matter, while we sit

and sip sangria, and wonder if Dad

will show up before the moon. I wonder

if at the bottom of a grave, every candle

is a little pathway, something to grasp,

a tiny little wire stretched cleanly

across the earth's magnetic poles. Breaking

a crust of bread from the basket,

my mother gums it slowly, slides

the little pat of butter onto it, careful

not to burn her sleeve in the candle

perched cleanly in the middle of the table,

each radian reaching nervously for our faces

as if it's the last step forward it can take

before being snuffed out across the horizon.