When the owls beneath our skin

fall asleep,

what becomes of night

can only be dreamt comfortably

by apostles delighting

upon their dramatic exit

from New Jersey

years before Catholic dormitories

burn to the ground

& the smell of twisted satisfaction

remains with us forever,

like friends of dead hawks

ruining the old religion

while we hide in the library

to avoid our wives

returning to tell us

everything about our lives

is terrible, a morgue of dark secrets

nicknamed homosexual slurs

emerging from years past

when the woman who one day

would harm our child

was young, bearing witness

to her father beat a dog,

beat a horse

& brandish a shotgun

before she inhabited his body

in deference to someone’s mother

who once gave us

homosexual nicknames for fun

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