Someone cut the middle out
of the book of love and put
a poem in it called “Of
Expiry” which begins: “One
fatherless afternoon / I
brought in the mail / it was all
politicians / & offers to accept
money / in exchange for
divers services / none of which
I need now. / The language
of relentless imperatives /
has started to get to me.
I / have this blue shirt
that doesn’t / fit anymore,
but I still / put it on,
/ sometimes, just to see
if / my body remembers /
how to shrink from loss.”
Somewhere in Chaucer
there’s a story about
Saint Cecelia preaching
& converting people
after surviving
a fire bath
+ 3 executioner strikes
to the neck. The shirt
still doesn’t fit
so I go outside. The miracle
of Saint Cecelia is not
that she doesn’t die,
it’s that she does
when god decides