I.
Listen O Israel, the apartment was ragged
with crucifixes & peonies. I lost St. George inside
a Wal-Mart Home & Garden. St. Olga
I killed. Even now I don’t want
to talk about it. She was trying to answer the bodies of Kel,
Jules, Aaron, Grace, Marley, Nick, Lucas with a cheap
Bic lighter & a two-euro candle. All those months wasted
asking God to go hungry. The basilica
is an apartment for blister-winged angels, my hands
are a blistered prayer. I burned myself. I burned
aloe for stone. I burned meat for St. Clare who rocks alone
in the back of my heart & still will not eat.
In the prayer her sister becomes so heavy no one
wants to drag her away. In the prayer we evict
doves from inside the walls, she becomes
a saint after dying. She becomes overdue
rent messages plastered over the confession door.
II.
I don’t even know when He got his first kiss I don’t know
the name I don’t know if he was afraid.
Saints I don’t believe in offer to let me sleep under
their beds & I am ashamed I still have these nightmares.
Listen O Israel, the Lord is Our God the Lord is one
boy I can’t pin down outside his own stories & I’ve been told
never go home with a boy like that. Nothing owns
you more than faith. The Lord is our God the Lord as one
Mexican kid kicking Coke cans outside of an old gym,
speaking no language I can understand, loving
St. Olga of Kiev in her life burning
children. Nothing owns you like the boy who pulls
your hair. In the prayer I find St. George
answering questions. I find the cancer growing like asphodel
in my friend’s head first. I find her
as a saint I’ve always know, redbaseball cap & all her fear
of cooking over fire. She becomes St. Clare’s
sister. She becomes the entire fleet of angels scratching
her arm wih a thumbtack, bleeding a mosquito bite out.
III.
Asking for anything itself is a kind of believing.
Hear me O Israel. I refuse to apologize for this year
fit to eat the wings off of angels. So I got on
the plane & she didn’t. To hope is to ask
Someone. Hey sister’s murderer. Dear wall-eyed Spider
pilot cruising over rain. The medical term was crown
fracture. The medical term was exsaguination. The medical
terms were don’t talk until I need to burn
my hands lighting votives for her. After my Israel
ran out of gods, I started throwing the hips
of men. I cut my own hair. St. Clare in my heart
became a thin latex balloon & I wanted thirty nails to listen
to what made her scared. Hear O Israel, I want to nail her down
to one last birthday party.
In the prayer she marries a ghost. She turns forty.