deluge
I—the sieve through which a rushes was flowing

chose the fallow and not the Father, almightly,

for mooring            a dove in fullfeather where only

the greygrey was sinkingslowly
            His ship was ordinary

            though the archipelago betrayed its contours

            the boy had a habit of cracking His whip

            so gently I could not hold space close
            if He broke the air with his taste for flagellation

            I draped myself over the open window            lingerie

            fornicating the holes of his redwounded hands

            & redemption an unmet promise in the gospel of His guilt.
La Niña doing its dirty work to make everything wet

the names given me ringing like church bells

through the age of His uninnocence

for how do you exalt at the ersatz altar?
            How do you count the ratted hours.    the morningafters

            holes in the walls circling lost months turned dirt

            as discharge            this ruination muteless

                        oblation that summoned no god
If not God, He, a gentle shepherd

comingsawingconquering in a converse mirror

the land genuflecting His shape            and scent of spring

arrested on broken breath of extended limb
            as if to say            Here is a prisonhouse

            Here is a thousandyears debt	an hourglass counting

            the sands of my time running through doors

            marshalling an ode to call this anointing excision
                        to declare I lost my knowledge of the grasses

                        I walked but could not name
                        to testify I moaned with my hips turned out

                        under vulturedecorticated sun
                        without covenant nor prophet            organs

                        ravaged by the augury of plains spread open
                        to live the likeness of a supplicant body
                        to worship my bruising better that way
The first line of the ninth stanza of this poem borrows some phraseology from José Esteban Muñoz.