• Sorrow is too heavy for the arms of wilting
    angels. Sheltered bodies of irises keep falling over
    themselves- lashes like felt-tipped whips
    made to keep their halos from toasting the probing sun:
    their mother
    eclipses the whites in their eyes
    as if sipping communion from the rims,

    though they were already blinded
    babes lost in the woods- clustered like a trampled prayer pile
    at the foot of a sterile pew. Their hung heads prayed,
    God smile through us

    but He only shook the silver linings of their bed, the skin
    where their roots were consecrated, and my needle
    nails trespassed handholds in His face- carved a tattered red carpet
    into the bridge of His nose. I filled the spaces with my mortification-
    two transplanted sonograms and four embracing
    pinky fragments
    that promised never to uncurl

    .detached.

    ears and toes folded over
    as they tried to pick their favorite fossil pose.
    I wondered if they could hear the rush of fluids
    from their writer’s broken pen, the ink
    that would never utter the names of its poster children
    for birth control. Their paper thin existence burned
    through me- from the outside in; I crumped
    folded napkin wings with my Germ-Ex guilt, and disinfectant
    buried them

    in the center of a white-lined mass grave
    where the father’s name will go
    to mourn
    the ends of a mangled wire halo smile, stretching
    angels across crosses
    like small coats on huge hangers.