Santa Maria della Concezione
Rome 2007
Penitent monks who made mosaic of reverence.
The moon is new, sickled.
I, too, often wonder
why particulars matter. Our love:
absinth and the bed
on fire. Irma, Cri crying out
reaching, lengthening daily
into self; being before end,
Pantheon’s ring of illumination.
How time can hold.
Street vendor’s magnetic stones clicking
clicking.
Clock of bones
that so delighted you.
Sun through the ring of pantheon.
We make myth of sun, of burning. When fire
enters flesh
the wrungs of the ladder,
collapses. Gore, horror, thread
what is left. How should we speak to the children
of this? They have seen our catacomb
of skulls. Every skull
a world
undone.
I know you, imagine your caverns, grottos,
break myself to construct this loss: thigh, hip
fingers
bones of the clock; every vertebrae
a memory opening again,
again.
And mother’s arms, Mary, Mary
who washed them.
Santa Maria della Concezione Rome 2007 Penitent monks who made mosaic of reverence. The moon is new, sickled. I, too, often wonder why particulars matter. Our love: absinth and the bed on fire. Irma, Cri crying out reaching, lengthening daily into self; being before end, Pantheon’s ring of illumination. How time can hold. Street vendor’s magnetic stones clicking clicking. Clock of bones that so delighted you. Sun through the ring of pantheon. We make myth of sun, of burning. When fire enters flesh the wrungs of the ladder, collapses. Gore, horror, thread what is left. How should we speak to the children of this? They have seen our catacomb of skulls. Every skull a world undone. I know you, imagine your caverns, grottos, break myself to construct this loss: thigh, hip fingers bones of the clock; every vertebrae a memory opening again, again. And mother’s arms, Mary, Mary who washed them.
