O Lord hiding in the sand—
For how long have scorpions filled you—
O Lord you are a scorpion getting smaller
How many nights have only
helicopters loved us—
O Lord praying
to the landmines
for a torso to follow you,
to be in pieces the way you are
in pieces
O Lord breathing because we cannot
find your head
A mother took us into the doorway
where she lived
and showed us flowers planted with her daughter’s
eyelashes and black fevers
Did she ask you for the prayer
her strongest son sweated into the desert
when the fire was a voice falling
and he could feel your blistered hair
that was still the color of water—
We washed the clouds
from your flesh
and made up words
for your charcoal kingdom
We let the suicides continue
We stole the songs from a fly
to speak to you, Lord
sleeping with shrapnel
in the slashed-open bowels of a lamb
Header photograph © Loretta Bloom.
Rob Cook lives in New York City’s East Village. He is the author of six collections, including Asking my Liver for Forgiveness (Rain Mountain Press, 2015), Undermining of the Democratic Club (Spuyten Duyvil, 2014), Blueprints for a Genocide (Spuyten Duyvil, 2012) and Empire in the Shade of a Grass Blade (Bitter Oleander Press, 2013). His recently re-released Last Window in the Punk Hotel was a Julie Suk Award finalist. Work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Caliban, Fence, A cappella Zoo, Zoland Poetry, Tampa Review, Minnesota Review, Aufgabe, Caketrain, Many Mountains Moving, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Colorado Review, Bomb (online), Sugar House Review, Mudfish, Pleiades, Versal, Weave, Wisconsin Review, Ur Vox, Heavy Feather Review, Phantom Drift, Osiris, etc.