On Purity: Novena Day Nine

where the hawk
where the prey
On Purity:
Novena Day Five

I cut / / / / / /

I multiply everyday images.  I apply an aluminum point.
To the landscape.
To the sentence.
To the photo.
To the figure.
To the word.

And suddenly with a slight tremor of eyes, vertebrae and finders I
destroy everything that exists.
                                                                                Juan Felipe Herrera
                                                                                Grafik

You’ve never said though that doesn’t mean
not ever not at all
that it didn’t happen to you
too that a man raised
his hand to your face but not your face first
your shoulder probably, brotherly
in the weight of it, brotherly
in the way it lifted and was able
to what you’d taken
to him that day and not by any way
that was obvious as the rats
who lived in our cellar were obvious
                                                (and you even stood with me
                                                on those and into
                                                that dark occasionally, though
                                                more often than not you stood
                                                by the hooked trap
                                                door and tried
                                                to keep the cats
                                                from getting down
                                                there but it was plain
                                                to me that’s exactly
                                                where they needed to be)
more slight, more magician like
to the always following eyes
who kept you
when you learned to smoke
a little later after mass
and like brothers
you’d suck in the world and blow it back out again
until the end had been
reached and foreseen and your ride came
to take you
home and maybe it was more
than a smoke
you took with some of them: I knew
a few who like our own calmed only
when the booze (the truly celibate one)
took them the way it would take you
(it’s true, look, sitting like it does, waiting,
it takes no lovers on its own but when it’s lifted
up to the lips and cupped on the tongue
and inside
the cheeks and hot in the throat)
and that first swallow with a man burns more
than any sex you’ll ever have
and young as you are you can’t
know that but breaking
the rules you do
know that, you do, and boy
you go home still
a virgin and the priest takes the collection
seriously and as always alone in the rectory
pours it all out to God
and his shoulders
and his hand
and some feathers of the spirit he feels
flutter come
upon you both
later in the night going down
on the floor like old men
like brothers kissing each other
hello or goodbye you never
neither of you know which.

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