How to Refuse Capitulation

---

Before you raise your hands

            or kneel before an omnipresent

god over the surface of a cold

            floor, a fluorescent reflection will

arise as a ghost beyond the

            periphery. As chasms of mist grow

into a blessed matter of stillness

            walk around the expanse of light.

A thousand people hum into

            quiet space. Sky unmoors as a harness

in the shape of clay.

[Prayer: I see a lamb being slaughtered, hung

over a shop of electric blue lights. Blood on

its limbs, head thrown in the street.

            All I know of grace is a different hue.

A cobblestone with stains of blood. The wind

carries a ghost. Godhead. An exponential tangle

of leftover bones the teeth cannot chew.

            A restless matchstick over the eye of

a falconer. A flock of moths by the lamplight

of an empty porch where no one lurks.

             Phonemes of similar symmetries in the

silence. Listen: the myths we lodge in our midriffs

            Bones calcify into lines, vanish into flesh.

Land will keep you until it kills you with

an ignition mercy of an entity it replaces.]

Until you rise in the hallway beacon

            ignite your chest. Crack open the duendes

of ghosts in your body.