Then the LORD caused to rain upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. — Genesis 19:24-25

 

i spray paint my personal sainthood onto the stone walls of sodom

because i’m in love with a girl

who gold-leaf-haloes her own body

who sanctifies herself

who shatters the glass between her and heaven

 

i know a crucifixion when i see one                 and this city is full of executions

we live and love condemned

carried outside the city gates to a skull-place

holding her hand                 knowing her and knowing her

 

barefingered i split the flowers apart to offer them one by one to her lips

and this gleaming devotion                      loves the sin and the sinner

loves the prayer her open mouth makes and the holy that follows

my breath in her naked body

 

how the sand fused into glass under the weight of heat

        east to west no difference but desert

resurrection has her fingers tangled in death’s long hair

 

i carve light from the air

and she cradles it like a child wrapped in burial cloth

 

i’m in love with a girl who turned back to look at the brimstone cloud

my handprints on the saltglass of her chest      my breath on the seacurl of her lips

 

we make our own sort of holiness

here in the burning outside the city walls