TWO POEMS

Ode to Prayer

you said gimme that consumer
cult value that vacant
value vernacular that
language play that in
its vacuum looks
blessing bound this
second a balloon &
inside that ball each
spherical time my 
skin caught sun &
the billy goat laughed &
we sang &
we sang together
               without languaged thought
& we knew the birds
would return to bathe
in the backyard pot’s
standing water          yet with my prayers I swear I am not
swearing belief or piling
wants into the ever-
open hand of what
we refuse to name
Mother for fear
of what we might become
when our singing dips
below the register
of the little boy flailing
his arms &
giggling & shrieking
in delight as in 
the backyard he bathes
beside the birds that keep
returning &
returning &
returning

I invent new ways to play water

I Shouldn’t Be Alive taught me
sharks will form a prayer
circle ‘round a raft
while the floaters form
a pyre. They must have shared
in my pain, texting lovers
the same truth over and over
and over. A logic
one lives without, jumping
from stone to stone
but never into the river.
Truth exists!, my father shrieks, resisting
his idea of Derrida. Lots
of talk in this boat, but no one’s changing
the rules.