Judgment

JUDGMENT

I stand where I would have been covered

in falling blood—the point of the pierced

body—my reflection in the bronze skin

of Christ sculpted into crucifixion, hanging as if just

put into history, His brown head at the nadir

of its nod as if the very floor had summoned Him

to look, He eternally forced into this position

that both casually welcomes and warns,

neither of which I wanted, which makes it

difficult to look, so I stare, instead,

at the marble floor’s swirl of frost

and liquid bone, of tempestuous fog,

swirling the way I imagine

squalls inside the body, squalls shape-

shifting like a story passed

between lips where the flesh is

soft and the story’s plot—as twisted

as the chimera with its lion’s head,

its snake’s tail, its goat’s body, a thing

to fear, to worship, to sacrifice—the plot

billows like smoke from the bronze

stomach of the Sicilian bull

where three human skulls were removed;

I name them Perilous, Dictum,

and a name I will not share

with you, no, but I will share that sage

and frankincense breathed out

from beneath burnt bodies was like a name

to a kingdom of appetite and sweetness spoken,

charred skin raised like hands eager to claim

the naked bodies dancing around it,

their sweat seasoning the air, this the story

told to me: screams crawled through a pipe

into an emperor’s chamber, spurious

music, bones of the roasted victims shone

brilliantly once the bull’s belly-door opened,

opal, pearl, the many things a body can

become, skeletal towers, well-chiseled

testimonies woven into necklaces,

an adornment warm as touch.

Final Poem for the Famous Poet

FINAL POEM FOR THE FAMOUS POET

Woundwondered, they circle

you: headless monument erosion had—

before they thought they knew you though did not—

claimed.

Thick fog hides shoulder-up your unhead, hides

your excellent circumscribed height beneath

which, chanting, unaware,

they wreath your senseless marble feet.

They loudwrath where loud finds no place to enter

you and enter their own unthought: rage-

bright beacon to nowhere

that had they unfollowed, had they retraced their steps

away from their own unimagining—?

Ozone settles your barren shoulders that are more

like than unlike their our-mouths-open-our-heads-mourning-

ourselves selves.

January 28, 1918