Preaching Ecclesiastes

            After Rilke’s The First Elegy

How fragile you must be to gently curl your fingers

around those of the man who paints your nails.

As if by grasping your palms and smoothing lotion

over the tired knuckles,he somehow touches you.

You kneel at his pulpit. Phantom hands grip yours

like a prayer and you know where God is.

Crouched, paralytic on the tile,

 you walk away with the color of Newton’s first apple.

What kind of terror is it that searches

for the grip of a strange man’s hands?

There are some whose fists use gravity for pleasure,

and whose dirty, crippled mouths hold the genitals

of the next generation.  Each saliva crystal that hangs

from the sordid corners of their lips speaks for the estuary

inside; a dirge sung from the jowls of animals.

Then also exists the gravity of saints, whose fingers rise

and weave in despair. Their knees bend and fold

to sway the earth from its misery. Multitudes of silent,

beating philtrums plead for the death of humanity.

Their answer is the aid of a faustus hood and scythe;

a dark coroner of souls gathers people like leaves in gentle arms

Woman

J Sorensen

You left me to tend the orchard and i couldn’t do it

with all the ladders and moving and descending and ‘orchard’ is a lot of trees

i was a nervous child a naked banana when You came back and You said

GROW BALLS GROW BALLS You said so i thought maybe and

at least try

i started spitting and it would drop like a chute-less man

the balloons inside of me folded just a little

and the next time was at the hospital and i couldn’t lift the bed

this time it was They and They chanted

GROW BALLS! GROW BALLS!

the balloons folded just a little

i couldn’t cross my legs or sit to pee

so i tried aiming but it was

more like hovering and the balloons

kept folding just a little

like restaurant napkins

just a little at a time they became

smaller so i could spit farther.

then on the day that i could aim, i realized-

the balloons were gone completely.

they had folded into nothing,

and new ones hadn’t grown.

i didn’t have chest hair, and i didn’t have balls

so i thought MOONSHINE and went to the bar.

i just sat there drinking until I could feel

 what I thought were raisins and a breastplate.

Man, I was starting to worry I couldn’t be just like You.

I couldn’t build towns or invent the wheel, couldn’t pick a president,

couldn’t choose an address, couldn’t even smoke. but now, I have these fermented grapes

and the moonshine and the chest hair and I can aim and spit and

You don’t have to worry about the balloons anymore, they’re gone.

they’re gone,

I promise they’re gone.