grave deeper. It’s easier than you’d think. So what
if I knew who he was when he sidled close —
hat tilted back, caipirinha in his hand — and matched
his hips with mine? I toyed with his buttons, felt scars
through his shirt. I didn’t tell him where our daughter
had gone or what my husband had done. He kissed
the blood blisters on my fingertips and never asked
how I got them. That’s not why he’d come.
When soldiers broke the lights and the musicians’ arms,
I brought him to the burned plantation, hid his face beneath
my skirt and leaned against a rubber tree — still alive
and leaking sap. Somewhere in the new dark, a man
in a uniform cut off another man’s tongue and ordered him
to sing. Wind pushed the flames closer to heaven.
How I Lost Seven Faiths
I was given my first god as a child, a side-speared redeemer
who rose and walked after death but whose broken body
hung over his transubstantiated blood. When my daughter
vanished, I adopted a book of spells in a foreign tongue.
When my homophonic translations of curses didn’t give me
my daughter back or even a sign, I tried the rabbi who lived
in his tomb twenty-three hours a day and came out at noon
to eat hummingbird tongues served in mango compote
and honey. After my rabbinical miracle wore off I tried
divination by umbrellas and solar devotion but gave them up
for the euphoric theology of handling snakes. I lost faith in that,
too, when I woke to a constrictor choking on my big toe.
My undisciplined doubt didn’t sharpen my questions or make
the harem of angels stop haunting my godless mind. Better,
people said. It would get better. But I didn’t want better.
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