by Daniel Edward Moore
is darkness wearing a dress hand-sewn with a
rose’s needle of thorns, then call me a gardener
of troubled terrain, at home on my knees in a sea
of weeds drowning in allergic bliss. Call me priest
of the fallen petals, serving last rites with dirt beneath
my nails, singing filthy hallelujahs to a blazing sun for
doing its job so well. As a choir of blisters stormed the
stage of my old, arthritic hands, I recall how it sounded
when the clippers teeth ate the world around me. Admit
it you love the sound of my head voice swinging from the
legacy of Judas, but like all things roped in quicky by God
before the unraveling begins, I was struck by betrayal’s
hand-me-down tongue hysterically praising fashion.
Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, North American Review and others. His work is forthcoming in The Meadow, New Plains Review, Rust Belt Review and Action Spectacle Magazine. His book, “Waxing the Dents,” is from Brick Road Poetry Press.
Emerge Literary Journal 