The body happens
and we consequence up.

When I said I’d eat even
your baby fat, what I meant

was collect your meat
and deliver it to me, I’m tired

of chewing the same bones
day in and day out. Look me

in the eyes and stop being sad—
they just discovered the skull

of a mammoth in a pumpkin patch
a few miles from here.

As a boy I had a filling punched
out of my mouth. I found it

the next day in a tuft of onion grass
and tried to bite it back into my tooth.

The mammoth was a dumb beast,
all low forehead and too-close

eyes. The real world doesn’t care
about our spiritual conditions,

just asks that we be well
enough to smile at its clamor.

What can I do for you,
little vermin? Little casket

of gold? Milk splashes
into a bowl and coronates

itself with a crown of droplets.
I too have been trying to exalt

my own body, but there is no switch
to flip for this. I fumble toward grace

like a vine searching for a wall.
Any drunk can tell you willpower’s

useless, but that doesn’t stop us
from trusting it—the drowning

man surfaces three times
before sinking completely. Are you

going to finish that tongue, my love?
I’ll chew it up for you, spit it

down your throat. No blame
lies with the weak, with the steam

curling off the pot of hemlock
tea. God can always see us,

but he can especially see us now. You owe
me nothing anymore, you still-

twitching vein pulled from a neck,
you wiseblood, you wise new blood.

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