And this is "Hymn."
H-Y-M-N, "Hymn."
"The pink troll of our decade snickers from under its bridge,
as the country goes crazy for Jesus,
and the grey men in the alley start to stink.
I am humming under my breath in the key of doubt,
as you pray to the god of washrooms, make us clean.
Each day's bitter ribbon and its calculus of light.
I sing, o bastard of my heart, be still.
Your god is the god of mirrors, and the house
a paper wasp builds is paper.
There are broken slats in every tiny thing.
The pupa and its carapace.
The celery salt, the stalk.
The way my birchy skin peels off.
Your hennaed hand.
Your hand.
How grief runs through me like a pack of eels.
Silver and colloidal, the tides have seen us coming
and turn back.
Like them, our work is breakage.
To plunder to from fro.
Inside us something pliant, soiled,
bearing the dent of thumbs."