what kind of wilderness?
thick trunks of gas station signs 
& the seven eleven that does money orders now.
i'm most fond of angels in 
the bible without names. i feel like
only they listen to people like us,
i pray to them with empty notebook pages--
the blue lines make a harp. what kind
of sound do your vacancies make?
i was re-reading about Sarah & Abraham--
trying to coax something out of them.
they came to sit on my bed, holding the baby
that was also just an over-ripe peach 
but also a boy named Isaac which means "God Laughed."
& he laughed & he laughed & he laughed.
i had to discover hagar & ishmael on my own,
out in the gleam of a sunoco sign. hagar:
the second-first wife of Abraham, sold
to him when Sarah couldn't have a baby
because when god called us jars of clay
he only meant women. her son was named
ishmael which means "God hears." which is
how i've always felt-- i've felt like 
my body is a one-way radio-- god the static cloud.
can we call this laughter? & of course she 
was cast out when Isaac came because all
we want to do is laugh-- laugh the weigh
out of the sun. i tried to do that 
today but it turned back into a viper
& snuck in the open car window, coiled
up on the dashboard. i let him bite me 
because he asked nicely. & out in the wilderness
when they ran out of water, the angel 
(the one without a name) touched hagar's
eyes so that she could see a well. 
she tells me she's been trying to track 
that angel down again ever since. i like to think 
that the angel helped her without god's permission.
that afterwards he ran away & erased his name from
every instance it was written-- smashing
the syllables like beetles as they tried
to make their way back to god. god who was still
laughing. she tells me she would 
let me see the wells if she could & she
puts her thumbs to my eyelids like the angel did,
saying, like this, he touched me like this. 
ishmael tried to buy a pack of marlboros but
hagar tells him to save the money. we share 
a blue-slushie instead. she tells me there's
a well in me & i'm not sure if i believe her.
she might just have said it to be nice. i don't
feel like a well. i still feel like a jar.
i ask her what it's like to meet people like me 
who try to carve some meaning out of her life--
out of tired books. she laughs & so does god. 
the angel without a name turns off all
the street lights so that the only glow 
is from the gas station. this is the wilderness
then, yes? Abraham still casting us out. 
i say god sure does makes a lot of promises 
to make nations out of men. 
she hurls the peach at the wall. 
we listen to the harp.
ishmael says he hears he hears