I feel no sense of religion except this. 
Each hand like
a bastard on my lap. 
I am thinking of the size 
of a tiny darkness
in my palms
that shake out verse
like emerald hummingbirds.
I keep thinking of the word Rhododendron.
In my mind there is only this word
in different sentences. 
I plant a rhododendron where your head should be.
It is Christmas Eve in Brooklyn. 
I peal an orange in the nebulous vapor
and everything is quiet.
I take toast to the window
and throw the rind at the moon 
that recedes into the clouds 
like an iridescent testicle into the holy lap of the atmosphere—
I am thinking of the body again.
What does the puckered skin above her lip look like now? 
The false teeth that will always 
be perfectly intact—
today I woke up 
baffled                               that she was 
gone       and now 
I have been wandering in gym shorts and a sweater 
the empty submarine 
like Professor Pierre Aronnax
on Christmas Eve; I do not look into it further than I have to. 
I look into a glass of Sangiovese
and drink it like the red sea 
being sucked into a black hole.
Like the blood of Christ.
Because at our core 
we are vampires
who cannot stand the corporeal. 
O my family—your love 
like a sucker punch; 
my welterweights dancing 
for a knockdown. 
I’ve got my book of things 
that happened on the moon in 1979.
I’ve got my alter 
and phaser gun set to stun. 
I’m among the officious scent of living things.
But I am reading the poems of the dead.