enslaving?
Dear hatred, sweet hatred,
do you not move our enemies
to know us better?
Prayer for Envy
Canvas envies paint.
The bullhorn envies
the voice without need
of a battery.
The diamond envies our indifference for coal.
Pavement envies the boot, whereas
the stiletto envies grass
which is more true than
the stiletto envies the boot
or that pavement
could envy grass.
The needle envies
the wound it closes, the scalpel
envies skin.
The ground the air
for how it moves; the Earth
its steady orbit.
The dead envy the living,
above all, for their smell.
Envy
envies only itself.
In a song, all silence is envied by its notes.
Notes being nothing
but noise without a pause.
The hand
envies the hangnail
which harms
without intent.
Prayer for Paternal Love
All eight fingers on his right hand refuse
to be a blessing
so that even at the dinner table
he cannot pinch salt from the crowding
of his digits.
Days after he was born,
Only dogs,
his father had said,
could ignore them.
Eight splayed fingers on the back
yard stump, knuckles
around the wrist,
Hold still, his dad says.
The boy prays the octopus
of his hand contains
a secret.
Bouyancy
like silt that can storm
then settle, given time.
He has loved his father
less than either of them
would wish.
Now give it here,
his father says, and the boy
to prove the point
reaches for their axe.
Prayer for Happiness
When your father dies and leaves you
more money than you anticipated
can you admit there is not in his death
some fickle breeze of how easy it is
to embrace happiness?
Liquid,
hard to hold, happiness is an acid
not long contained, it leaks
through any trap. Assumes
any shape:
Happiness comes to the hand
holding the knife that slits the throat.
Happiness in the eye of the kiddie
porn find online.
Relief is bedfellows with happiness
when the car crash fells someone
else’s daughter, when cancer
takes down a killer who we breezily
forget is loved by family.
Each time we celebrate
the downfall of a dictator
we drag happiness through our muck
by its collar so that happiness
will not recognize itself.
Prayer for a Wig
in memory of Elise Partridge
In the untidy storage room before a reading,
she touched a small hand to her cancer wig with a laugh
at its benefits. Like, my hair is always done;
no more expensive cuts!
The irony had an echo, how the more
people you love the more bad news is had.
She smiled. We smiled. I described a drag mullet—
a dear friend’s wig re-gifted, that she’d been given
with cancer at sixteen (what luck to be born
to outlive experimental treatments)
—that I admitted was a joy to wear. Proof
my dear friend lived.
Prayer for Promiscuity
Midnight in Stanley Park,
the moon is an ally. Night
breathes
