Water & Fire
Litany of ice, I know the names of
all of your shards, silver splinters
of mirrors weeping who you were, bleeding
tears of tarnished coffers captured
in someone else’s war, yards of fine Jew
linen folding in its arms charred
ivory & gold fillings, someone else’s
scars, though killing is an art, one
that melts the seals of its death’s cold warrants
pushing out onto currents those
Stone & Ice
floes no one knows or recognizes, your
soul’s jettisoned cargo, those parts
of former Selves that have far to go on
this Nile northerly, there blows the
nose of old Osiris, below the high
watermark the bulk of his toes
and his cock, and where they go, your own could
talk, telling of how a darkness
of tragedy is what you have become
made from the most beautiful parts.