No Is a Complete Sentence

The body happensand we consequence up.

When I said I’d eat evenyour baby fat, what I meant

was collect your meatand deliver it to me, I’m tired

of chewing the same bonesday in and day out. Look me

in the eyes and stop being sad—they just discovered the skull

of a mammoth in a pumpkin patcha few miles from here.

As a boy I had a filling punchedout of my mouth. I found it

the next day in a tuft of onion grassand tried to bite it back into my tooth.

The mammoth was a dumb beast,all low forehead and too-close

eyes. The real world doesn’t careabout our spiritual conditions,

just asks that we be wellenough to smile at its clamor.

What can I do for you,little vermin? Little casket

of gold? Milk splashesinto a bowl and coronates

itself with a crown of droplets.I too have been trying to exalt

my own body, but there is no switchto flip for this. I fumble toward grace

like a vine searching for a wall.Any drunk can tell you willpower’s

useless, but that doesn’t stop usfrom trusting it—the drowning

man surfaces three timesbefore sinking completely. Are you

going to finish that tongue, my love?I’ll chew it up for you, spit it

down your throat. No blamelies with the weak, with the steam

curling off the pot of hemlocktea. God can always see us,

but he can especially see us now. You oweme nothing anymore, you still-

twitching vein pulled from a neck,you wiseblood, you wise new blood.