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Aqui, Santo Domingo
Here, a place where the dead gods dwell,
heads detached from bodies.
Here we slip into the unseen world. A tattered veil,
an unfathomable place.
Here, in a temple of impossible angels,
covered in supreme gold and white,
we swim in this cold moon lake, bellied
in deep-water howls.
We are cupped by craters, here, at the cozy, quiet-dark center
of every terrible thing.
Here, swaddled in this soft ritual bath,
homespun, milky, wet. Here, stars are pearls without oysters. At home
without a home. Here,
I cannot feel the twilight—But I know the lamp is in the sky,
spotlighting this populated house
for centuries before
its birth.
Mornings, through the highest window to the east, the sun illuminates
the two-story altar. Here, a shrine
of santos, there a lamb or young pigeon blanketed in its blood. Here, religion, an
anvil.
There, and then, an eternal courtship
without the presence of language, without
the necessity of context—
only weavers of the golden thread.