god

So we, being many, are one body in Christ,
and every one members one of another.
ROMANS 12:5

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off,
and cast it from thee.
MATTHEW 5:30

At my beloved’s burial,
I can’t see his body.

Only carnations. I hear
your name and my beloved’s

in the same sentence
I didn’t come to meet you

whose men are everywhere,
calling themselves your body

singing about their own
beautiful blood which I’ve never

seen but am willing to bet isn’t
as beautiful as my beloved’s

jacket, full of his skin cells
and waiting to reincarnate

from a Goodwill medium rack.
In the room of my beloved’s

body, no pictures. Only
carnations. They spill over

his box like misplaced grief.
Underneath them he dances

with strangers at a gay bar
two hours from town.

Unbuttons his uniform
in a desert barrack an ocean

from town. Leans on his red
Bronco smoking through relief

in the middle of town where
too many exes are watching

the club door. Lord,
in the room of my beloved’s

body, your men won’t admit
the fact of his body.

In the foyer, one room away,
a decade-old portrait of him

in pearls and a black dress,
his expression proof

your goodness doesn’t extend
where it counts, the stories

I hear about my beloved
as mistaken as your miracles.

Lord, when I loved you,
I didn’t know

so many of your men
would exile so many of us.

When I was ten, I wrote
volumes of letters addressed

Lord and warned classmates
about the rapture and called

televangelist hotlines for assurance
the devil’s lava wasn’t waiting

beneath sleep. Later,
my beloved took your side

in debates about your existence.
If he was right, you owe

him a confession. Tell him
how your body wouldn’t take

your advice, how its right hand
severed an entire demographic.

Look at him, in his new eyes. Say
what you can redeem, and won’t.