francine j. harris

confessional poetry

you are a thousand priests.  a sea of priests.  the human priest.  i beg your forgiveness.  i beg it long winded.  i beg with no form.  i beg insurrection.  i beg for remembrance.  do you have the time for this    

priest.  will you hold my head here   priest.  father.  is it quiet there.  are there grasses.  is there mud.  i love the way you touch my hair.  i love the way you us, us sinners.  i got your edits, did you get my our fathers.  please don’t throw out the baby water.  please don’t let the pews be empty.  dripping white candle, burn til she bows.  cheap for a votive, burn til she blows.  goddammit the lattice.  father hail mary’s.  sometimes, i forget my poems.  bless me father, i don’t remember the lines.  it’s been this since.  since the sin.  this is my last confession.  (once a priest told me

he forgets his sermons.  bless me sinner, for i cannot haunt.)  i beg you hold your head up steady.  you’ll tell me if you forget your bread.  did you only come for the wine.  then drink the wine, and take this   priest.  drink the words, and open   priest.   drink my sins, and bathe me    priest.   i only come for your drummer’s ear.

your forehead is the colored glass light.  i’m your kneeler, i fall when you joke.  your kneeler thuds the ceramic floor.  your kneeler studded, your mouths in smiles.  your mouths to throat.  your starlight cheek.  you smile of priests.  touch me where there’s nowhere   priest.  hear me out.  take me in and pull the curtain.  you’re a hollow priest, my sorry soul.

i need this pen.

get me to god.

between old trees

there's a rain formed.  it has a face that reminds you

of hills.  it has a country you could name if you were smarter.
it has a kind of mouth.  it seems wrecked from all the commotion
of a windstorm.  it has tear ducts, and what does that say about
you.  it lives by the hope that someday again, there may
be bluing in a backyard wash, so far off
the sky.  this is why children
chalk suns on the sidewalk. the wind brings north
through a hundred miles
of inanimate things. 

when it hits, all the places you have been
seem too late to talk about.  all is gray
that storms, and it crosses the country on busses,
looks for burned trash, hopes to see enough rivers,
hums something you can't quite remember
but still you sleep.  still, you wear no shoes
against the pavement and sometimes
the lightning, sometimes a wet rail

you lean over.

message from wolfgang my mother left on the refrigerator

my father’s a bracket.  a cane won’t help his posture
curled under upright boys who trade baggies. 

in a dream i chase the motherfuckers down
with an ice cream truck.  run over
the poor, the pop-eyed, the popsicle
eating, the twitching and teenaged.

it’s five in the morning on
a saturday.  before the sun is even up
in winter,
                              the bracket passes.

my mouth is in shotguns,
barreling down faces in blood over ice.
i talk about them like
artificial flavor - man-made, garden
starved, too high on barrels of empty sugar…

but when the phone rings,
i knock awake with bloodlust.
(call my house this early …
their bodies look so little in red,
go so brown in the snow.