"In the Shadow of the Castle Walls, Wherever Those Walls Were" and "If Saving Us Meant Parting Ways with Mercy" by Jeremiah Moriarty

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

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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.