You carry it in on your palm-stretcher, / a brittle-spit, a kicked-out life-in-a-stick, / / all stuttering beak and shattered spindle, / like a rickety dollhouse staircase.
“[The church] needs about 400 years of repentance to queer people,” the would-be priest laughs.
Remember how we used to love? / / The way our hearts were rough-hewn / and rabbeted together like the shiplap / on the barn out back
Dare the wish you dare to wish on morning’s last star: / That every creature be mated and warm, / every couple coupled and quickened
I would rather lose him than remember lies. Loss is real and heavy / and as hard to carry and balance as a shuttle of slack coal
We want bright lights. / We want a voice / of god, or reason, recent studies / / roaring in our heads
I am left holding / / a fleeting scent of adornment / and shorn roots, their seep / hushed.
the unnamed letters in the alphabet of atonement; / the bright curve that highlights shadow, and equally / the shadow that shows us the lineaments of light;
