The bells again. You open up your eyes
again. A gap. To be a person—
human and then a woman.
To be one who has had
enough.
Enough of the basement.
Enough of the garden
with its high wall though not high enough with all
the spy-holes unless they were
just accidental cracks
through which one could see
the world. It took myth to get one’s self
out. It took
a vow
to believe in a
god
to get the courage to
get out.
Of what? World, you hunger with a briefcase
running through the streets
quickly hiding those hands
wanting to feel something. The bells
rang as they do, one long note, one
short, a man with a tall hood limping and
limping and yet always staying
in place I
thought
listening. It does not go forward or up or down this
call to
prayer, a creature stuck in a doorway
made to cough up
one truth
without alteration. It will not
confess to
anything. The thing the bell is
saying stays for its millennia
the same, dripping in flames, in holy
men, in
cries and rage of
why yet another son
for no reason with his raw soul had to be
ripped from
time—so commonplace the pain—
& you are supposed to make a system
of them—all those
the god loves and wants
to take a closer look at, ex-
amine in
detail,
entrail and eye, kneecap in left hand, earlobe in
right, I see him look from
one to the
other then
bend down to pick up hair and these few fingers—see—
he does not know where they
must go—maybe in
this chick of hair—his left hand moving to his
right, carrying fingers, nails,
into the hair but then
something is
not right—he tries the eyes in the
palm of a
hand, tries eyes
into an open woman’s
sex, tries many eyes, tries them in
mouth but mouth
has no face, ribs in one hand,
calves with heavy feet still on in
other—looks
dismayed—looks affronted—it will not make
its sense
to him
its maker—no—
quickly he shuts the whole pile back into the bloody sack
and tosses it
aside to where it seems its people hope (he can
hear them) (therefore the bells) its people
on their knees now
hope—their person is being judged—and they make
offerings, and they re-
member all
the best
parts, all,
and they begin
to sing.
They give him everything they have. They sing.
This poem originally ran in the July 14, 2011 issue of the magazine.