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THE GOSPEL ACCORDINGTO  A.M. I can’t tolerate the moon tonight, how it weighs in, uninvited. I know the upshot of its soft white logic. And how am I to answer— riddled with scripture but no longer Buddhist or Baptist, inept at both the lotus and the zealot? A Methodist would make up her narrow mind and lie back down in it, a Calvinist chalk up another chance to grovel back to grace, a Holy Roller wrap herself in rattlers and wear that devil out. Beneath their far-off prayer wheel, saffron monks sink down into a low-pitched wail, a discipline of moan and growl. I envy them their holy jokes about the self: the mirrors painted into cloud and cobalt, the orange, pointed hats with black-fringe veils. Here, I am witless in the small, frank hour. Outside my window, magnolias, petal by lush petal, magnify the ache.  I should be dreaming in the tongues of angels, I should marshal all the ingenuities of faith— but I’m stalled once more before a darkened glass, letting moonlight render me just plausible: devotee of nothing but desire, and wild again to do God’s other will.  ...

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