Vision after the Sermon
by J. Matthew Boyleston

Gauguin

From the outside looking in,
the ground is a splotched fingerprint in blood
and the curved bar of women bent like Zs
is the windowsill you look through into a room
that bursts with shining things.
You see beyond a land of black and white
to a place where the cost of color
will be a touch to the hollow of your thigh
and the rot of a blessing on your tongue,
at a man and a blue angel with bourbon wings.
Your sight is stuck like love in the throat’s nib.

Homage

A series of conversations about breaking stuff.

"I really don't want to talk about this."

"Fine. Okay," said Kate. This was just last night. Long silence for a phone conversation, maybe ten seconds, maybe even fifteen or twenty. Not twenty. But long. Maybe fifteen.

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