Gary LILLEY
SERIAL
1. Practioner of the Faith
I am perilous baby,
every day I shave
I say that to myself.
Everything is cut to the stone
of purity, anything less
just gets cut.
2. Glory
God is still in business
and the purchase of grace is virtue,
the abundance of his love
follows prayer and cleansing,
a sacrifice by the petitioner.
I stand naked before God. This blade
of tempered steel will be drawn
across the calves.
3. Convergence
If people had seen us pissing
in a halogen alley off 5th Street,
they would have said we were intimate.
I'm wetting the base of the wall,
she squats a shadow length away,
a begged cigarette dangling off her lip.
We're watching each other,
bareheaded and exposed, our steam
coming off the bricks.
4. Her
A cold sliver of moon.
I decide to let the woman
do what she does and then
take back the twenty
I had folded into a cross.
I'd opened it flat and laid it
in the burns of her right hand.
I can smell hell-smoke
in the whore's clothes,
decay in the spread of her skin.
5. Skull
In a vacant house she's wrapped
around me, her head laying
on her balled-up pants. Her lips
grind against me, a dry dance
across my bones. She stares up
at the cracked ceiling, turns away
like I was trying to kiss her,
showing me a side of mouth,
the drug heat chapping her lips.
6. Less Than
It's not a completely random thing,
the impersonal exactness
of the transaction
that buys every hole she has.
When she's finally judged
to be missing her family will release
an old photograph to the press,
Not many will remember her
ever looking anything like it.
7. Ascendancy
She's a collection
of worn edges
until I push the blade
towards her heart. One hand
keeping God's name
inside her mouth,
I look into her eyes
as she leaves.