by Joshua Gage

I would swear allegiance
by every scrap of scripture
in the world. My faith
would be a cavern,
a million caves to a million tombs,
each with an angel that rattles
my body like a tambourine
and insists, “He is not here.”
I would have the Sun
resurrect across my scalp,
my follicles igniting into doves
and dermal vocabularies,
each one a conversion.

But then the cock crows,
and I catch myself
shaking my head yet again.

Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His newest chapbook, blips on a screen, is available on Cuttlefish Books. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, Ethiopian coffee, and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs.