Click here to listen to Steve Gehrke read this poem. Here he is again, distracted, lonely, pulling at the doll-strings of desire,
fingering his sheet music of moans,
whispers, his holy name, the whole choir
trying to sing the body from its cave,
to ignite the risen body into flames,
though the self, to flee its own decay,
must be beaten, must bloody the reins,
which is why he collapses on the spill-
cloth when he’s done, his body half-exhumed
from the mirror, the painting like a meal
half-eaten on the canvas, sloppy, ungroomed,
his eyes deadened, pupils like swatted flies,
and the opened robe swanning from his sides.