All my readings come like this: pulled

       from earth like plumeless thistles

scattered down the sun-seared highway.

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The lengths I’ve gone to find you,

       Lord, would have me stoned in one life,

burned the next. In this one you have suffered

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me to live, a little longer, harder, wilder

       than my enemies. You send your angel to me

once again—their face a flash, a woman’s and

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a man’s—wings flayed and spread like meat

       in open air, hair wreathed in white-

hot coronation. And I, already gazing

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out beyond, am led to lie down here in fields of green,

       to simply be. O Inconvenient Lord, unsheath

my sword and let me do the thing I know.

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Or look to me as one continuous blade.

       Tell the angel I’ll be wasted here,

these cups in either hand bright and brimmed

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and running over. Give this reprieve

       to someone more deserving

of such opulence, opulence—opulent God!

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You cause my heart to burst. I always want;

       I lust and thirst and there’s no end to it.

O stubborn Lord, the woman I must be

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on land, by flowing water, and in need

       knows only this: her body’s tempered

swing, the brandish of her flesh.

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If I must rest in such a place as here, then lay me down

       between the dirt road and the river.

Beside this flowering of yellow iris, make me.

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