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Praise I love the dusk inside churches, the soft glow seeping through windows, most of all when the pulpit is silent and my thoughts not drowned out. My reverence is for the perfect body of a newborn, all the wayward tendrils of growth, the butterflies' drunken wing beats in a lavender field, leaves gathering moisture above arid fields. An olive tree flames in my breast, its aged trunk scarred by wind, leaves rushing upward. Its songs are the cicadas' fugues, the joyous shrieks of children playing in its shade. I want to overthrow the papacy, bulldoze rectories where penitents cherish hair shirts, edifices where the powerful listen to themselves in airless rooms. I want to praise speaking out of turn, fling open the doors to outcasts, honor the fragile body's wisdom, the unpredictability of light. |
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Issue #29, October, 2002 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.