God is always twenty-five

and I am still alive—

I didn’t die in the taxi,

or in the apartment,

or at the beach that night

where my hunger tore me

out on a silent black rip

to sink like a wasted plum

swallowed by Leviathan.

Between this and a thousand

fires left burning, living

is Olympic bingo.
There are suicide nets

in the shopping centre.


A woman who works

at a sandwich counter

in the basement food court

said she can’t forget the sound

of a human body smashing


into the ground.

The coordinates of impact

are printed on the back

of her tongue, nerve endings


bound to vertebrae that

come when she grinds

into the shape of a cathedral


under brutalist concrete

frescoes. On evenings


that I do not die

I make prayer—skincare


routine, seven steps—a

learned fastidiousness

in atonement for so much

annihilation. They say

hair salons and beauty

stores 
are recession-proof;

another Mecca has opened


in the mall. At the altar


I kiss the feet of God’s


memory, light candles

to her Beast. In nightly


benedictions I burn


the temple down—


orange heat in bloom

between me and the mirror


and God’s unlined face.