Lullaby on Mount Moriah, and: Dioskouri

LULLABY ON MOUNT MORIAH

The lullaby I wrote on your throat about the stained hilt of the knife in my hand begins—Whisper, or snowwill come and make its sadness famous in your mouth.

The why of you a radiant devilfish, the what of you a fat little soul blueing at the edges.

The surest way to receive a free ram is to tie your son’s hands behind his back. Offer me a metaphor, God said. Abraham stretched Isaac out on a rock, Like this?

Do not be impatient with the gift. It will bleed out in the time it takes shadows and atoms to inch their way between stars.

Every fire thinks it’s a part of God, but lightning is not a promise, a flag is not a shield. Love wants you to believe that somewhere there’s a god that can

do your dying for you. There are raptures that won’t come for you and the raptures that will.

In between, satellites blink the news to the lights in our hands. Love will teach you many things, most of them tragic—

like last kisses and letters under your windshield, like helplessness, like the man on the news weeping and carrying what remains of his son in a plastic bag.

And Abraham said, This is how much I love you, and measured Isaac from ankle to scalp. Love will gut you and then ask

you to carry on singing with light on your tongue as a father finds flies crowning his son’s dreamless head radiant as the hand of God ushering a late sheep from the bushes.

DIOSKOURI

Once, twins cracked from a single egg, mortal and immortal and with the same spit curl

and troublesome Greek fate. Once, you and I broke into the city garden. One broken gate,

two shadows over a fence. We left stones in the birdless hands of St. Francis and our initials

on the fountain. It’s so easy to forget when you’re forgiven. And I did. Forget, that is.

Jesus offers himself to whomever wants him, shaving off flesh into every open mouth, and I

took it. Stale and merciful and forgot you at once. Once I called, but the phone had already been stolen

from your pocket. Once the wallet. Once a knife. Once the fireless awe. The object is not objective.

I know the crime better than the criminals. Once I scratched the scabs from your hands and called

them rubies. Faultless. Absolute. Once, when you were living, I tucked little liquor bottles in my bra

while you distracted the cashier. That night we littered the beach with cheap plastic and monologues on

how art lets us live twice. We believed it was good to live, better to remember. Once, one of the Greek

twins climbed a tree to escape his pursuer but it’s easier to kill someone who won’t run. I wish I’d told you

that story. Instead, I grew up, I loved someone else, I lit cigarettes to study the smoke and tattooed

your middle name on my wrists. Half an immortality in serif. Trees blacker than their shadows.

Once I knew your body like Eve. Postlapsarian but naked anyway. Your lower lip, a disobedience

and sweet. I meant to tell you, the other Greek twin, the immortal one, chose the fate of its brother.

They became stars and patron saints of horsemanship and sailors. The night you died, I dreamt I was pregnant

and washed ashore clinging to the wooden breasts of a ship’s splintered figurehead. My eyes milky

with uninviting light. My back sunburned and peeling. I birthed a two-headed horse. You baptized it only once.