Our bodies met between two loose pages of the Bible.
We came to bleed for a higher power: God in the stars, a satellite.
Both glimmered with the same promise, the promise of ascension. We raised our pistols to the stratosphere,
removed our yarmulkes. Wrapped our tongues in barbed wire.
Every bone crumbling inside us recasts itself in fire.
To face a future suspended from the rafters, wings splayed open like a question,
a little blood in our mouths tells us we’re alive.
105 The Paris-American
Tory Adkisson was born in West Covina and grew up in the California High Desert. His poems have appeared widely in such journals as Third Coast, Linebreak, Quarterly West, Mid-American Review, Los Angeles Review, 32 Poems, Best New Poets 2012, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in creative writing from The Ohio State University, and currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area where he is at work on his first collection of poems.