Poetry | January 08, 2024

Apostrophe

My husband didn’t understand prayer.
He said people who pray are deranged.
Who do they think they’re talking to?
Even with Bluetooth technology,
do they not know how ridiculous
they look, directing words to the sky?
Truth requires a suspension of belief,
I said. Science is only half the story.
You’ve taken ecstasy: you know
what it is to transcend the flimsy
bounds of body, space, and time.
O millennials. O anthropodicy.
Information underrepresents us:
bootleg liquor down the drain.
Do you remember the first night
we met, I asked, when we both
became addicted to that which
would never return, the stain?
Imagine singing a new song.
Imagine asking and receiving,
a surge of animated presence,
hoodwinked stars lighting up
the brazen, incandescent sky.
The opposite of a flat, literal,
unambiguous screen is God.
The opposite of a simulation
is a stimulation of the soul.
O alphanumeric characters.
O foothills of Appalachia.
That in your veins red life
might stream again, and I
be personified once more.