by Erín Moure
Tonight my body
won’t come home to me, it won’t
hug me at all
It huddles naked three blocks away,
on the roof of the stone Chinese church
by a belltower
How its lungs howl out its anger,
its heart fizzes in the dark
rain!
Tonight I am faithless & wayward, I am
my cousin & my aunt
sitting on the shoulders of my body three blocks away,
both of them howling
fit to burst my ears, & me stupified & cold.
My insides are smeared with warm sperm,
don’t talk to me!
Tonight it’s my body, I’m stuck with it, don’t
talk to me, I’m finally out of the woods
& off the ferry-slip
over the Lion’s Gate &
into Vancouver,
my skin lonely as a sail,
I’ve climbed up the wall of the Chinese church
& left my body angry there
When I cringe
it shudders three blocks away, I can’t
comfort it, or coax it out
from under its relatives, to come nearer
to home,
& hear me, who cries for it—
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