hymn by Ian Smith

H Y our waters were related after all: kissed by the same scorpion stinger and baked in the muddy watershed that stretched between our houses . it wasn’t a stretch, then, to call you a god: god of wine-tinted ice creams, of sweetness and silence; god of closets, of hands on mouths, of fading M without a trace .

N

every day holding for some transfiguration, an answer to my prayers; but like all the other gods, you sat and watched me peel my knees from the floorboards. i howled my ires / swallowed the fire alone in a midnight cul-de-sac: jagged throat keening, the phone still motionless on the cradle .

it wasn’t a stretch, given everything, to call you nothing at all . i whisked myself away in barbed wire, choked down a peach, traversed across the valleys of my brain in search of new psalms to sing . a distraction . but once you look a god in the eyes,

see the way he smiles—

so look up . regard the crescent moon cutting through your fog, and remember that a silent deity isn’t worth the worship . that idolatrous kindness and adulterous blindness are not the same . to kiss the fates on both cheeks before you leave . so grab your winter jacket from the pews and snuff the last candle in the temple. let the building collapse behind you, listen closely to its final words “the mass has ended, go now in peace—”

by

Ian Smith

then go in peace .