Roger Reeves

                     It turns out however that I was deeply
Mistaken about the end of the world
                     The body in flames will not be the body
In flames but just a house fire ignored
                     The black sails of that solitary burning
Boat rubbing along the legs of lovers
                     Flung into a Roman sky by a carousel
The lovers too sick in their love
                     To notice a man drenched in fire on a porch
Or a child aflame mistaken for a dog
                     Mistaken for a child running to tell of a bomb
That did not knock before it entered
                     In Gaza with its glad tidings of abundant joy
In Kazimierz a god is weeping
                     In a window one golden hand raised
Above his head as if he’s slipped
                     On the slick rag of the future our human
Kindnesses unremarkable as the flies
                     Rubbing their legs together while standing
On a slice of cantaloupe Children
                     You were never meant to be human
You must be the grass
                     You must grow wildly over the graves

All lions must lean into something other than a roar:

James Baldwin, for instance, singing Precious Lord,

His voice as weary as water broken over his scalp

In a storefront Sanctified Church’s baptismal pool

All those years ago when he wanted to be

Somebody’s child and on fire in that being. Lord,

I want to be somebody’s child and chosen

Water spilling over their scalp, water

Taking the shape of their longing, a deer

Diving into evening traffic and the furrow drawn

In the air over the hood of the car—power

And wanting to be something alive and open.

Lord, I want to be alive and open,

A glimpse of power: the shuffle of a mother’s hand

Over a sleeping child’s forehead

As if clearing the city’s rust from its face

Which we mostly are: a halo of rust,

A glimpse of power—James Baldwin leaning

Into the word light, his voice jostling that single grain

In his throat as if he might drop it or

Already has. I am calling to that grain

Of light, to that gap between his teeth

Where the many-of-us fatherless sleep

And bear and be whatever darkness or leaping

Thing we can be. In James Baldwin’s mouth,

My difficult beauty, my weak and worn,

My future as any number of angels,

Which is not unlike the beast, Grendel,

Coming out of the wild heaven into the hills

And halls of the mead house at the harpist’s call

With absolute prophecy in his breast

And a desire for mercy, for a friend, an end

To drifting in loneliness, and in that coming

Down out of the hills, out of the trees, for once,

Bringing humans the best vision of themselves,

Which, of course, must be slaughtered.