Prayer Pieces

SHERRE VERNON

I know a prayer position
and pieces of poems;
a thousand bits of dry, paper-thin gold
and sticks.
– from Emily Dobson’s “I Have Come Simply”

Your body lies folded in
daffodils, folded
into the highway, the city.

We’ll go to New Orleans,
a foggy suitcase and the long road.
When they wake you, I will know
your face, a clove of spun sugar,

sand and ribbons; your skin,
a song to the kneeling sun,
a song of blood and stone:

a bedpost angel cast down
the man I admire most:
– the blazing father
takes the middle son,
gives the only-ghost.

as usual, a siren

I sort through buzzfeed: red, winter, Targaryen
pirate, Buddhist, honey

there’s traffic from the stadium
a podcast about Christ as metaphor

I could have walked away

suddenly so still
his emaciated body
the tremble against my chest
a simple breathing

a year ago, I gave up tarot

we follow a lovers’ script
say, I felt you
hurt me I felt
you let me fall

we will name a son Oberon
a daughter, Lily
you are singing through the wall
it sounds like violin,
like chain-linked fence

this is harbinger, a veil
and a regimen for succulents

I will wear my hair down
this is where water was

split and concrete, a ravine
and sirens and shards