Aplomb

There is not much to say about plums

that William Carlos Williams did not already cover

but I can say that they (and blackberries too) have a sweet

so startling deep that it hits you between your eyeballs

tingling in your brain and back jawbone.

The flavor emerges slowly, like blood clusters in a bruise

or the way it falls in water like backwards smoke.

Is it too biblical to associate fruit with death?

And sex? 

But Adam ate it too. The serpent spoke to them both.

What is forbidden always has flesh.

What is allowed always has breath.
What has teeth always fights back.

She ate it because he cared to ask.  

Opposites

When a union of opposites makes a ceremonious entrance
I stand at the doorway, flinching
I have asked a million times for a map of this place
Where is the crevice wheremy voice will echo? When I whisper in between the beams?
Staring at gilded gold cherubs and overflowed toilets in the basement, crusted in sediment
The children singing in the choir
His blue eyes crying in between weak chains of laughter
He just buried his best friend, his mom makes a dry joke
Pulling back the heavy maroon velvet curtain, peering into the penance box
Dust shifts and I feel a thousand people crying. Their guilt as palpable as the cool, oily holy water I dip my finger into
scratching the bottom of the stone basin at the exit. I feel it like a sigh on my neck.
Do I belong here?
Looking up, crosses, pain, paint stains and light filtering through the diamond slices of windows
I do
I do?
This is my favorite part: the pews. The hard wood against my back and sits bones. You have to sit a certain way.
You have to remember we will all be pinned to a tree someday.
Outside, the sun is hazy behind clouds though you have to squint to see the green gingko tree leaves turning yellow at the edges. “There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground,” Rumi said
There are a hundred, thousand ways for your ego to die. Look up, look up.