iconostases

George Toussaint

when we were shorter, our home
was full of statues & painted icons
of saints & holy persons gently
holding doves, olive branches, books.
now, years later, the only icons
in this apartment are the birds
who collide with the windows
& leave the memory of their warmth
for me to bury in the hard dirt
behind the dumpster. the last book i read
was about colonial legacies inscribed in
our geologies. the last branch i held, i killed
to put in a green glass bottle in my window sill,
its petals pierced by its own thorns.
it was later in the morning, & i stood
on the overpass, beside the
pizza boxes ziptied
to the chain-link that said
jesus loves u & honk
for the troops: messiah & missiles,
the two strongest american gods. i felt
the wires against my face,
tasted the oxidization, the fingerprints of my
friends who leaped into the everything,
& wondered what it would mean
to be caught on the front of a rich man’s red car
to give the children at the elementary school
the day off, on account of my head
separating from my rotting trunk &
becoming like an overripe stone fruit
scraped over the unforgiving
parking lot. i see encaustic existences
in my crumpled feathers, preserved
in the resin trickling from my mouth, the
last breath in the wet grass
under the azaleas. i was always
deciphering the saints
my mother prayed to so i might
know why her eyes
were redrimmed & quiet.
pressing flowers
for answers, i am one
with them.