Saint Perpetua
Saint Perpetua – that’s her lips, Ms Bones.
Oral fixation, my therapist calls it
running a white tongue out his mouth
as if to put me off her kiss. But no,
Ms Bones, a day might pass,
I can’t let go four years of quiet want
Or four kisses, one per year collapsed
upon an August day, with Gould’s
Mismeasure of Man outsized within
my brain. Between my lobes a God of
current thrusts me at her once again, but
past her shock she’s all the church’s.
Friends, just – she mouths, a stiff arm
carving out a distance, I’m nearly in
convulsions.
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