Poems
Psalm
Not, I wanted to call this testimony, to say
evidence, one who attests, but something yes
delicious about psalm, as in song sung to a
harp, that English is the only instance of the word
in which its p is not pronounced, which begs
which pleads, which we removed long ago
to be more snake than path, why I thought
about testimony because I never did, and
there are degrees of abuse, and one can inter
course without consent and only receive a
fine, it is the third degree, psalm begins us
on a mountain, fine, because the mountain can
only watch its animals fall, its face sings to
a string as a thing plummets through an
anti-scream, anti-testimony, the body as it
will be unseen unlikely as itself, as its bright
evidence of being, I say this because a story
became clear to me, about me, the work I’ve
done on forgiveness without letting myself
off the hook, a phrase that means to unhinge
the strung body, though like most contemporary
language it elides the violence in search of
more common reliefs, to be let off the hook
when a ride is no longer necessary, when an
appointment is no longer necessary, when a
confession is, when fine, so I am fueled by the complication
of shadow in a linguistic sense, in a disordered
sense, the story is a simple psalm, a p hidden
in our wet dramas the what we owe, and owe
and oh, psalm as in paradigm, between balm
and bomb, answer me when I call to you