Relics

Relics:

 

surviving from an earlier time

 

do you keep your finger nails

in mason jars?

 

your hair across the tile floor

becoming            corn husks

 

artifact—cadaver

 

all the field flattening at once

in a great             crop circle

 

you’re landing   on ancient ground

 

will anyone keep pieces of

me like they did with the saints?

 

tangible memory

 

the right forearm of saint stephen of hungary

the head of saint

thomas aquinas

 

these are first class relics

because they were part of

the body

physical

 

the foot bones of travelers

 

when the times comes

that there’s no flesh on

my heels

 

will they be worn down?

 

could they be counterfeited

as the soles of saint peter

who walked until he was crucified

 

a basilica              sprouting

from his rib cage like a poppy flower

 

years later they would dig into

the roots & find his bones[?]

when does the body

belong to the church?

 

it must never be divided               further

keep the bones from     scattering

 

at the end of times

they’ll have to find each other again

 

when souls climb back

into bodies &

we go up like mary

 

who left no thigh bones

for us to rest our heads on

 

braid my hair & slice it off

with the pairing knife

 

i can see finger bones

 

traversing canyons

 

ribs         disentangling

 

from the roots of sycamores

 

scrambling for wholeness

 

god won’t take you

any other way

 

so I gave up a long time ago

 

when i first lost my baby teeth

i swallowed two

 

another fell out in the grass

& grew into a dandelion

 

so that I could scatter myself further

 

use my clavicles for coasters

on the night stand

 

fingers bones for the steams

of pears