I confess, I touched myself in clear view of God. I knelt
in the tall grass. I knelt beneath a bramble of stars
in the strange weather of the universe and felt the musk
grazed field pressing itself to my mouth like a wound. My mouth
to the dirt. My kingdom. What does it matter if nothing here is real?
The wind still tosses the laughing sunflowers. The loons will rise off
the rippling lake like an idea. In the crushed yellow
of this dream, I am busy inventing shame.
Forgive me. How nothing can lift its bright stain.
171 The Paris-American
Anthony Cirilo is an MFA candidate at Rutgers-Newark where he
teaches composition. His poems and reviews have appeared inThe
Volta,The
Oxford Review, and Montclair
State University'sCreative Research Center. Currently, he is co-directing the documentary Poetry of Witness, including original interviews with acclaimed poets from
around the world.