Words without Walls by St. Germain Sheryl Shotland Sarah

Author:St. Germain, Sheryl, Shotland, Sarah [Germain, Sheryl St.; Shotland, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781595342560
Publisher: Trinity University Press

Tiara

MARK DOTY

Peter died in a paper tiara

cut from a book of princess paper dolls;

he loved royalty, sashes

and jewels. I don’t know,

he said, when he woke in the hospice,

I was watching the Bette Davis film festival

on Channel 57 and then—

At the wake, the tension broke

when someone guessed

the casket closed because

he was in there in a big wig

and heels, and someone said,

You know he’s always late,

he probably isn’t in there yet—

he’s still fixing his makeup.

And someone said he asked for it.

Asked for it—

when all he did was go down

into the salt tide

of wanting as much as he wanted,

giving himself over so drunk

or stoned it almost didn’t matter who,

though they were beautiful,

stampeding into him in the simple,

ravishing music of their hurry.

I think heaven is perfect stasis

poised over the realms of desire,

where dreaming and waking men lie

on the grass while wet horses

roam among them, huge fragments

of the music we die into

in the body’s paradise.

Sometimes we wake not knowing

how we came to lie here,

or who has crowned us with these temporary,

precious stones. And given

the world’s perfectly turned shoulders,

the deep hollows blued by longing,

given the irreplaceable silk

of horses rippling in orchards,

fruit thundering and chiming down,

given the ordinary marvels of form

and gravity, what could he do,

what could any of us ever do

but ask for it?

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