oh (madonna)

i know holy water runs in my veins.
it belongs in no tin canister.
i know these rules are impossible.
i am only virgin in the way we all are:
each breath of time kisses easy
the back of the neck,
then rounds over to flushed cheek.
each time itself, a first.
i know bodies love a thing
because they're meant to.
one day, i'll pass that onto my son,
and he'll know that if i could hold
his body inside myself,
then he can have a woman in him,
too.

my son will be a son of god
only because i am one.

i think it's too late for pleasantries.
i think the shadow man in my bed
is cool like shade.
i think the apple on my window sill's
gone rotten.
it's probably time to return it to the garden,
let the garden have its way.
i think i'll swap it for something else.
preferably something so filled with life
that even on the seed,
you bite.
i think god might just be a fig,
but nobody's gotten back to me to confirm.
maybe god is just the instruction:
bury.
then it's probably time to start collecting
rocks like my life depends on it.
it's probably time to dig a hole for
poetry, so it can see me,
scream,
and come running back.
it's probably time i stop handling
my problems that way.
maybe practice vulnerability,
just tell poetry how i feel.

poetry,
i wanna lick the honey straight off
your diction
and then know the soft body
you've decided to wear.

poetry,
sometimes when you're gone for
so long
i think i'll miss you so much
that the missing will carve a hole
or split me open like a good nut
or a good carpenter when
he's found his wood.

good
is just one
oh
away from being the universe,
one oh away
from losing its meaning
and accidentally becoming everything.
good is just the long sigh after creation,
the empty space above the brush stroke,
the shudder in the body when it knows
the thing it's made.
good is just one humbling
away from crawling in bed with the
shadow man and asking to be the
little spoon.
one day, i'll tell my son to ask how it
feels to be both.

dear good, please unmake me a madonna.

i don't know,
everything with a body seems to have a
backside, plural by nature,
so how can i choose what to be called?

i don't know,
i'm just hoping that one day
at the end of this paint stroke
god, or at least this one,
takes a breath, sighs,
and sees that it was good.

Photo taken at St. Mary's Basilica, Phoenix, Arizona, 2021