Sin Nombre

Untitled

The precision of dawn, a brow of white stone
the color of autonomy, the price of your hand
the price of any gaze to be shot stark from nothing

strings tuning themselves to willowy trumpets
wringing feathers with fingers, the snapping of necks
along the aluminum lines of your expert mouth
hung open

a lesson, a line, the number of faces beneath your own
billowing girdle, lattice of flesh, steady thrumming of
light beneath that plate, beneath that glowing disc
you will find the soul


Untitled (Unfinished Sestina)

My uncle signed his name in night
hued ink, a song to sing, he’d say
the face you assume when your
bones have turned to wayward dust
when the cries of the loon can no
longer be heard, the resigned day

rolling from its shoulders, the day
that is swallowed by night,
a cloak of sidereal blue no
closer to Him than, say,
these petals of pale coral dust,
these spokes of time your

ancestors quietly wheeled, your
heavily shadowed frame by day
adorned in wool, tawdry dust
rising from cracked lips as falling night
deals a blow to the disc they say
burns for Him and not one man; no

shepherd, beggar, virgin, no
ascetic lying prostrate while your
candle burns without purpose, while you say,
and make to repeat, ‘this and every day
serves as the venue for His arrival, this night
draws the curtains on His stage’ but dust

borne of fervor and stately conviction, dust
stacked upon your broken back, your beaten breasts,
is taken with the wind as feathers of kings

Bartholomew Dougherty, 2008/9