In the Shadow of the Castle Walls, Wherever Those Walls Were
inevitably there are two of me
and they take different roads to the bone
stones are a religion a condition
of a childhood spent in contrition
there’s a rock being pulled across a tomb and
a rock being brought towards the womb and a rock
that once sat on her third finger secret queendoms—
a woman used to live here
she pushed her lover off the parapet
If Saving Us Meant Parting Ways with Mercy
you—
you
would have to
amputate
the part of you not yet
chalice filigreed in muck
pick a villain and make of them
dark lord
bad guy factory sip of
ratafia you—
watching smoke
fudge the horizon cities we never
tasted
all of us heat-feast
prairie bleeding an empire
baked
atlantis the sequel and you
you—
you would have to
whisper reasons
over your
deathly tools the only clean things left
and choose one
-
Jeremiah Moriarty is a writer from Minnesota. His poems and stories have appeared in The Rumpus, No Tokens, Catapult, Breakwater Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. He tweets @horse_updates.