Always the next door.
four four four four four four four four
cavernous hall and holiest water,
and the harp player
pew for a park bench
the sound of brick sliding across brick,
discomfort of nail splinter,
eyelash removal,
the less light of winter.
sharpest of harp strings
slid between fingers
pressed face
a dust floor,
the knelt knees
the second taste of the same vodka,
spinning stained glass
hymnal headrest
chunky wet hair
the cross walk across you,
with the acolyte, seriouser and seriouser.
twinkle of liquid notes
the confessor lifts your puke-smeared face
explaining the brokenness of
things other than hearts,
you contrast your present condition
with warming up and scraping the car on a bitter morning
when gloves fail the fingers
and the sputtering engine is suggestive of the car's eventual death.
that's all the more cessation,
cases of aftermarket Freud, those bottles clanging in
sharper turns and stops.
The drunk and cleansing?
forgery!
any laughable stab at passing
a character off as an author
flopped as miserably as The First Third,
is that the priest's mother?
waving from the choir loft,
or old Ireland,
or the Amtrak station,
but love doesn't so much depart
on seafaring vessels anymore,
the vomit crusts,
and you can always compare yourself to someone like Robert Pinsky
should you become disappointed in yourself.
in the aftermath of some uncountable amount of swigging
(and amounts aren't counted)
all the people from the neighborhood are
lined up in the aisle
and genuflect with hands on the
stone floor before them
until two by two the confessor cuts off their hands,
throwing all the lopped partial carcasses
into a giant vat under the feet of
plastic Christ,
for an axe soup.
the hundred issuing spouts
slide across a blood-slippery floor
in the direction of the eucharist
to receive the body
into their mouths,
a ceremony for which their tongues must be cut out,
and you can see the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe
emerging from the bloodbath
that seeps into the pages of the hymnal
that was under your head.
you see a door to the west,
and the pathway to the south is blocked.
by the pew there is a lantern.
the confessor seems to have a note in his pocket.
you are carrying a canteen, a rope, and a rune.
the next level of the labyrinth is not visible from where you sit.
the red-running soccer moms,
eyes crinkled in appreciation,
watch the priest snap photos
of their nude little girls.
this is a priest who solves tricky math problems in his dreams.
faces in the axe soup, sipping
the septuagesima feast,
souls released.
you cleanse yourself at their unperturbed feet,
crust for crust.
you wonder at your chances of eventually being sainted,
using your hands to wring the blood and chunks from your hair
and volunteering yourself to be the official stirrer of the
boiling vat of hands.