Better to Marry Than to Burn

Home, then, where the past was.

Then, where cold pastorals repeated

their entreaties, where a portrait of Christ

hung in every bedroom. Then was a different

country in a different climate in a time when

souls were won and lost in prairie tents. It was.

It was. Then it was a dream. I had no will there.

Then the new continent and the new wife

and the new language for no, for unsaved,

for communion on credit. Then the daughter

who should’ve been mine, and the hour a shadow

outgrew its body. She was all of my failures,

my sermon on the tender comforts of hatred

in the shape of a girl. Then the knowledge

of God like an apple in the mouth. I faced

my temptation. I touched its breasts with

as much restraint as my need allowed,

and I woke with its left hand traced again

and again on my chest like a cave wall

disfigured by right-handed gods who tried

to escape the stone. It was holy. It was fading.

My ring, then, on my finger like an ambush,

as alive as fire. Then the trees offered me a city

in the shape of a word followed by a word

followed by a blue madonna swinging from

the branches. A choir filed out of the jungle

singing hallelujah like a victory march and it was.