originally published in Ampersand Review
nominated for a Pushcart Prize, 2011

There is an order to unloading,
a patterned release:
the words, the gestures,
the box, so like a womb
or coffin.

Go in peace.

from Reliquary

Again, I am here
at the airport
waiting for the last flight to Pittsburgh,
and I love you.

The first flight was cancelled
my bag will be lost,
security unwrapped your present,
I was touched by a man who wanted
to know if I was carrying a bomb,
and I love you.

It is the fifth of January, our first chance
at Christmas, I have lost my exit row seat,
the Air National Guard shakes the building
so I cannot sleep, there is a baby crying, there
will be babies crying in Chicago too, there
will be babies crying behind me on the plane,
and I love you.

It dawns on me that all my toothpaste and underwear
are probably still with the first airline, somewhere
on the way to Memphis.

It dawns on me that I will have to choose between dirty
socks and new socks, that the new socks will be white,
that the new socks will cost $8.99 per four-pack,
that neither airline will reimburse me.

It dawns on me that I love you.

Woman, I swear by all crying babies
that I love you.

I swear by every bent thirty-six inch inseam
in coach-class seating
that I love you.

I swear by Pittsburgh, and all the airlines that serve it.
I swear by each of the eight hundred forty miles between
your body and mine, by the three hundred two hours since
the last time we touched, by my infinite cell phone bill, by every
love poem I’ve ever read you from my trimmed-hedge, square-
corner, white-wall Iowa apartment
that I love you.

Someday I will buy you a house, and trim the hedges
myself. We will live there, and I will read to you in person.
I will compose my love beside you. All the time I now spend
in airports, I will devote to spending in you.

There is an announcement on the loudspeaker. The last
flight to Pittsburgh has been delayed. There is a chance
I will miss my connection.

Woman, I swear by all missed connections.

and be free with it I tell him as if it could be any other way for this little man and all his thirty-one pounds bellowing wordlessly articulate anthems to the tune of his ABCs demanding only that the universe repay him echoes in all the keys of the chromatic scale, reflected from rooftops and hillsides and beamed back down in audible wave spectra to rejoin his voice in canon as he acknowledges each return with a new offering, completing the cycle and confirming that he is its alpha and omega, that he, William Joseph Coppoc, two years old and able to count his fingers, is indeed the center of the universe just like any other point.

there’s this boy
in a room in a house
on a street in a town

and there’s this train
and it’s small and it’s blue
and he can’t set it down

and there’s this track
and it’s flat and it’s gray
and it lies on the ground

and it’s broken
because Daddy’s
not coming
back.

originally published in Ampersand Review

and so when I say we
are each other’s moons
I have gravity in mind
and velocity, two forces
in constant opposition.

A body in motion, almost
uncontrollable, hurtling
madly into space is curbed
by another body in another
motion, hurtling madly
into another space, divining
its own path based only
on gravity, velocity, love
and the laws of physics.

from Blood, Sex & Prayer
originally published in San Gabriel Valley
Poetry Quarterly

He asked me how often I pray
this God-squad motherfucker

like three minutes
on his knees
makes him an expert
a saint
a true apostle
of the onetruefaith
whose mission
of the moment
is to save my soul
through enforced
contrition

like genuflection
is a secret handshake
that will somehow get him
into heaven and get me
bounced

like somehow God hears
it better if it's loud enough
that other people notice

he looks at me
with this rolodex
behind his eyes
of all the reasons
his faith
is better than
my faith
of all the ways
his Jesus
loves me

and he wants an answer

I want to tell him
that churches are buildings
and knees are for blowjobs

want to take him
to the nearest all-night
dispenser of generic
Christianity, show him
how the pictures on the wall
are just a blend of Ted Nugent
and Charlie Manson

want to tell him
how they hid
from Herod
in Egypt, Africa
make him tell
me the difference
between black
and white

want to dangle
his crucifix necklace
in front of him
ask him why
after two thousand years
Christ is still
on this cross

but that's not what he asked me

I want to answer his bracelet not him
want to tell him what Jesus would do
want to tell him that Jesus
was homeless and hungry
with dirt on his feet
and under his nails
that Jesus knew prostitutes
(although not in the Biblical sense)

that Christ was a communist
an Arab
a jew

that PontiusGeorgeWHitlerMcCarthyAshcroftBush
was just doing his job
with the full approval
of the Church

but he didn't ask me that either
he asked me if I pray
so I say yes

every breath is a prayer
and if you haven't been
moved you haven't been
listening

every inhalation is life
entering the body
is Genesis
is man from dust
is love at its basest
chemical level

every exhaling
is an opportunity
to reciprocate
and you want me
to waste that shit
on now I lay me

every poem is a prayer
is a divine breath out
is my offering to you
because you are God's
creature and I want to touch
you, want to make you feel
what I feel, want to give
you my world in stanzas
and line breaks
want to know
that someone
is listening

every kiss is prayer
is inhaling flesh
is me breathing you
breathing me breathing you
breathing me

How often do I pray?
Every breath is God.

originally published in Ampersand Review

all matter expands and contracts, because
all things make their place in the Grand
Orbit, or orbital scheme, because all things
are made up of other things, are made up
of smaller things, which in the end can move
through time as well as space, because of this,
the saints and psychotics still believe that God
breathes through them.

from Bearing the Pall

the pall means the coffin
or the cover for the coffin

bearing the pall means to carry
to transmit, to harbor, to support
to call for, to warrant, to offer
to render, to exhibit, to birth

lowering the pall means to bury
to surrender, to conceal, to entomb

ashes to ashes, dust to dust

all of these things, I have done
for you

Michael, they found you
weeks too late, like a bad
tv detective show, by
the smell and the mail
overflowing, your dogs
starving, standing by you,
your ferrets gone savage
in the house, your cat
resurfacing days later
from an unknown
secret place

I hear you had become
300 pounds, had stopped
shaving, had grown your
hair long in the style
of the Levites

I hear you stopped
paying the electricity
and water, began
a garden, abandoned
it for the sake of meditation

Michael, they say you are dead,
your chanting no longer
incessant. They say your golden
robes are tatters, your serenity
shattered, your eyeballs bulging,
unable to close.

Michael, you are dead, but I am
unable to touch the body. Your
casket is closed, your family
is weeping, your house is empty

It is not yet real, this.