My speckled tongue, vicarious to a seating plan,

shackles my woe,

marring the ache with a masochistic

Catechism and starching the tears, resolute

for an angry nun,

with bloated aubergines for knees,

to rest her doubt on me - the wholesome home for blasphemies -

and palpate the pulpit for a family.

 

I whistle, locked, in the invasion of the irreverent embrace,

and my sin is smooth like a pebble, cool in your hand

and you hold it well.

It ripples in my palm like cancer and, invested,

such fossils break my heart.

I am incoherent but precise with this vault

as ambiguous as a crucifix’s stare,

I know no love

and saluting a placebo does not help.

 

Popping humans like pills,

the chemistry is a distance

I curl up in like a desert flower,

I am tangible but lost

and a raw generosity.