Scenes from “The Passion”: The Evening

There is an alley

where you can go,

where you can kiss

someone’s mouth

until you climb

inside them, force

your way in, push

your cells into their cells

and become one

creature — angelic.

It isn’t the way

you’d dream it.

There is piss,

dew-damp moss crawling

across the brick.

Some nights it is so dark

you must enter only

by touch.

Walk by in the light

and it will seem

like nothing.

The scripture

is written by wenches:

4eva, L+ J, I.T.A.L.Y.

A heart jagged in two.

But what you’ll make there

it’s not love,

it’s not weighed

down with that,

it’s feather, air,

an at-once exultation

of being not

of this time, this alley,

this shitty

good for no one,

shut-down town.

I never went there,

I promise you.

I never knew

such sweet violence.

Though there are mornings

now, miles from that place,

when I wake

with the thought of it:

wet and bitten, half-

winged.

Source: Poetry (October 2014)