J.D. Isip
Return
My White God, have me, a mess of sinew and intention
and blood, too, so much clotted me, black-speckled
simmering under the mass of heaven, of you, my god,
my judgment, misjudgment, offering myself cheaply,
the understory, transgression, down low, under
all the new flesh resisting domination, muscling
over bones, over years, over and over the hunks of us
hit the fire and the stones and the way he tastes at 3am
it’s thick and sweet, curls and billows beneath the white
cumulus bodies, nuzzles at their perfect curves, craves
that proximity to perfection, even attempts blasphemy
by mounting the god, trying this from another angle
oh, but there’s the thunder, the white sugar floss melts
sending you back to earth drop by drop, trembling
some electric curse that “we agreed” white is on top,
always on top, drop by drop, what you offer, all of you
gets sent back into the clay earth, into whatever exotic
“little” neighborhood he found you in, erasing pictures
and messages, reevaluating the men of earth, promising
yourself no more altars, no more cruel, white gods.
—Submitted on 04/30/2020
J.D. Isip is the author of Pocketing Feathers (Sadie Girl Press, 2015). His work in all genres has appeared in The Rainbow Journal, Elsewhere, Dual Coast Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Rogue Agent, and other journals. Isip is an English professor in Plano, Texas.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.