too rotten for a funeral mass and heaven

too rotten for a funeral mass and heaven

By Fray Narte

pour sunlight down my throat, it burns 

like a whiskey secret taken to grave: my chest 

is a bed of incarnadine moss 

where i retire and lie, not knowing — waiting for

death or life, 

for words to be purified by fire 

the size of my live coal heart; 

what is there to write 

out of it anyway? after all, 

i am now incomprehensible to myself. 

here, i confess my sins, absurd in their triviality, 

but the sky hears, declares a sentence, stern and unforgiving.

i cannot hear, for 

i am now incomprehensible to myself 

as i suck my nails clean of dirt, of meaning, of ripening rot as

the ghosts of poems from my girlhood beckon 

and excavate my chest, only to force themselves out of my throat; 

i bleed all over my teeth and smile brightly, 

swallowing it back like the good girl that i am.

as sunsets lick my bones clean — its tongue now cold and dulled

inside a coffin: my skin, 

the pall draped gently on top of it 

an aventurescent-white under the fevered sun 

and i am tucked in like a child. 

somehow, everything i write inevitably ends up being about death.