The Canons of the Sheep

-Rattlesnake Review, Issue 14, Summer 2007

 

Your Catholic song called me:

confessional booms beating down my door

 

We moved from factories to cemeteries to brothels

and every city was a mansion

and every World War II that started was a church step to the crowning—

always gold

 

In a dark century I knew you:

lured to a battered coastal building

wind whistled, kissed the rooftop

sea birds inhabiting bedrooms

 

Ignore the spilt salt, you said

it means nothing.

 

There are demons on this continent

a post-coital cigarette on a peninsula—

that is how I come to you

 

But it was always the European asphalt

that you wanted more than me

you said:

only in America does cement glitter but never deliver

so I followed you, settling midboulevard

blinded by walls and the backs of moons

giving birth to a new language of sin