T H Y G I F T S, F O R W H I C H [ I A M ] A B O U T T O [ D E V O U R ]
Bless me, dearest Father, for the sin
I was
born with—how I forget
your face, once
I see your flesh-
tinted photograph:
I am your ghost, a blessing
for the damned—a way out
of your life as soon as
the earth opens up
its mouth to let you
in. & inside, to carve this
haunt with brighter air
you are still
breathing—to stay
this alive: so faint
against the wall
I shiver
in the warmest of rooms.
I appear as a single finger-
print on the lips
of a god betrayed, to smear away
what shame I entered
into you those years
gone. Stare at me like a house
burning in lavender, Father.
Give me your voice
please—for it is
the only gospel I ever had. & never once
heard.
As if this body-
shot & hungered sky was left starred
with countless eyes.
Michael Wasson is the author of Swallowed Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2021). A 2019 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow and a 2018 NACF National Artist Fellow in Literature, he is from the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho.
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