When the Firefly Lands

 

For Jacques Fleury  



Give me some of that

sweet fuck.

Because the same sun

that shines over Haiti

burns this desecrated ground.

Big and brown, boy

you feel the vibrations.

There’s a rough musk steed

in your pinky,

there’s a virgin hellcat

in your thumb.

Like a devil full of God’s love

you cut down the street

rip halos through the town.

Sweet, blond, tree hugging fools

swear they love everyone

when you know it’s only you,

but you smile— kill them

with a flash of your teeth,

drown them in the glisten

of your eye.

Yes, the smaller animals

are all afraid.

Little sparks from you fly,

threaten to alight

fur, skin, scale

like hail storming down.

You want the bone—

and you know we’ve all got it.

Hard, porous, white,

break it if you bend it,

take the marrow until you render it

empty but alive.

There is more, there is more, there is more…

 

Oh sweet, dark God—

We sinners are calling you.


© Coleen T. Houlihan

Published in Ibbetson Vol. 20