NOVITIATE 

After you died I could see 
the secret of my making—
Somewhere in Virginia, a man took you 
to suffer his imagination, loved you
like a silo, like an exit ramp 
moving continental and huge 
toward the avenue.
When bad things happen, you said,
think of them as adventures.
I listened to your stories, how possibility 
resembled a long illness.
You were as predictable as the dead—
closing what doors were next to open.



WHEN GOD WAS MAN

My mother said men only 
care about T and A. 
But her someday alphabet 
wouldn’t stop me 
parting surely as a bridge 
after someone guns a car across it—
taking the curve too fast
in a Benz I can’t remember
the color of, dumb 
and feverish before God,   
holy in his assigned task—
brief beneath the golden cross 
that held my neck in two.