10 hours ago
Comets
God was drunk and sideways
and the moon a swollen olive
soaked in drugstore gin when Danny stopped
and pointed at the sky. It was an unimpressive bird,
a juvenile, we figured, from how its skinny cries sounded
more wounded deer than death. We sized each other up
the way a wall confronts a fender. Kit plucked a flower,
ducked behind a rosebush to throw up. A dozen years
before Danny got married and divorced himself
from alcohol and Jesus, before any witness
had to find warm words to scatter
over Kit’s cold body. I don’t remember
where we’d been, where any of us was
headed. The sky went on forever, someone
must have asked for Heaven. That barn owl heard us
calling all night long, every last word.
God was drunk and sideways
and the moon a swollen olive
soaked in drugstore gin when Danny stopped
and pointed at the sky. It was an unimpressive bird,
a juvenile, we figured, from how its skinny cries sounded
more wounded deer than death. We sized each other up
the way a wall confronts a fender. Kit plucked a flower,
ducked behind a rosebush to throw up. A dozen years
before Danny got married and divorced himself
from alcohol and Jesus, before any witness
had to find warm words to scatter
over Kit’s cold body. I don’t remember
where we’d been, where any of us was
headed. The sky went on forever, someone
must have asked for Heaven. That barn owl heard us
calling all night long, every last word.