The ship has sailed and no one is on board

Does a poet

cut themselves

into stanzas

or do stanzas

cut themselves

into a poet?

*

I am on my knees

in a dark closet

just like before,

where a man

who could be disrobed

tells me to look to the cross

and pray that I change

and change to prayer,

so I do,

chin up,

and see a naked man

nailed on hard wood

who is attractive and

whose wounds I wish

to kiss and

who I hope

would kiss my wounds

too.

*

She moves against

the edge my shadow

and the outline

shakes, then grows

in darkness

against the sun

to hold her for a

little while longer.

*

When I am dead

write on my tombstone

that he hoped this

wasn’t his life’s work.