Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. – 1 John 2:15

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16
my pastor says during mass / and I think I love the world, but I am no god / only a skinny boy with

enough rivers inside me to call home / to wage war / name country / continent / benevolent brute /
sometimes my beloved is a field of wide open overripe fruit and I am their only bee / sometimes my

beloved sings and my hands lift like lilted notes, twisting into a voice / just to join / chorus /

chorus / bridge / today I am watching the birds lift in a hymnal of snowed wing and feather and bone and I
remember that the last male white rhino is dead / and the bees are dying / and there are no more fields to

wade through like rivers / but I am a river / I am the bank’s dirt and my beloved buries bruised flowers
inside me / I am sitting / my face against the glass / watching a thousand birds / fall through a thousand

mornings / chorus / chorus / bridge / my beloved defrosts meat in the kitchen / the ruby / the slick red

wettening in the pink light and I praise this ritual of becoming / faithful rune of cartilage and cardinal/ I
think my love / like all love / is a kind of bird / wreckage of sparrow singing through unbridled throat /

yes / what other glory than this? I sing praise / hosanna / because when they told me
grief has a mouth / my first thought was to kiss it / forgive me / when they told me grief was an animal /

my first thought was to take it home / no, not hunt it in an open field / but home: dry its wet fur / feed it

defrosted lamb from the fridge / I’m sorry / I meant joy / I know you wanted a poem about joy / but
here’s the truth: when I couldn’t write a complete sentence in only English / my first grade teacher made

me stand outside the room and forgot I was there until lunch / because I had no language / I had no
language to cleave the world for space for my body / because once / in writing class, mistaking the

synonym of plot to mean the same thing I write: I lie in a story of land; a cunning of grass and rhye–– Yes. Yes. I

know the trauma of metaphor; the trauma of being a metaphor / I know metaphor’s trauma well the way
I know the sun will die and how my teacher will forget me / (I could not hold her language) / But some

days, my grandma and I will sit on her porch / our faces mauled by columns of sunlight / eat
bright fruit pulled from the ground / durian / mangosteen /rambutan like tiny bone-white suns / the

mangoes crowning our mouths / rising, like dawn inside our throats / a thousand dawns / a thousand

mornings / a thousand birds / falling / falling / falling / like notes / like overripe fruit / like overripe
song / I am twisting blue lilies into her hair / crush hibiscus around her eyes / and for once / we love the

world / and we are not god /and no one’s children / no one’s stupid forgettable children / and we are
not god / and we are not god /

but almost /

almost /