Church of the Penny Poker Redeemer
I learned to read a man’s bluff
stacking pennies, pushing the ante forward
and fanning out my cards.
Some sin is acquired.
My father never let me win.
When the beer was drained
I practiced being Jesus—him the sleepy
cross, stiff arms. I draped my limp wrists
over his, trying redemption on.
Apparition in Diesel
I don’t have you
but sometimes
I do—
diesel fuel
trailing through
my nostrils,
seductive curves
of a wrench’s silver claw
on some man’s counter,
meant to clasp
and take apart.
The homeless man I pass
at Howard and Mt. Royal
brings me to tears—
I fear I’ve turned
a page too fast on you
and seen you begging
or dead.
The siren song—
at what year
isn’t the vintage perfect?
Cleaving Athena
The first desires he felt might have been love,
though without the grace of translation
it was all grunts
and so desire transmuted itself into a girl, and now
a smaller baby girl, who also had desires but no language
and so she cried.
There were other girls who cried, but because of deeper fears:
the fear of being only half of something, and if they loved
their fathers.
How Athena’s heart must have ached. Or if the whole heart
of her felt full, like last Wednesday when we stuffed ourselves
with blackened chicken
from Mary’s Deli on the corner, and walking the block back
was such a feat but if that was as bad as it got,
we’d take it.
Waiting to cross the street, our conversation was paused
by an infant, shrilly screaming as her stroller was stopped
for the rush of traffic.
Not hungry or tired or pained, she just wanted to go,
to feel the bouncing of the stroller and know that it meant
she was moving.
