"after eschatology", Nathaniel Chew
cw: death, bodies, jesus
the prayer begins when there is no sin left
to the imagination. done to dust. you don't pretend
at made amends, that your clasped hands
will set the bones, myrrh the wounds, call the dead
to dinner. penance once meant not enough
and how do you uproot a hole like that? no,
the prayer is a song unspun to silk
on the tongue, blind stitch of sequence
and consequence, error and trial, aftermath
aftermath aftermath. there's nothing new to say
on both knees but the draw of borrowing
words was always the dark gravity of debt,
collection—of over tiding. the moon tugs
thirst to your surface. it is late
and the prayer is a metronome you try to make
lurch in reverse, substitute for the broken body
clock. it is late and you feel like jesus in his prime—
insomniac, sweating red, corpus for a hot minute
and by the weekend, atmosphere
in the tomb. in the space between hollow
and hallow, where your lips round to whisper
wet nothings, saltwater. the prayer is a fish escaped
from symbol, multiplying meaning
by zero, silvering your fingers in its wake. you blink
and lose the river. you wring your lungs
for weather. the universe shrinks to the present
tense. O heavens, O hells, O halfway
houses of half mirrors that O back,
just promise a landscape at the end
of the prayer, which truth be told is only a breath
held tight, carried into the wilderness beyond
amen—