Disillusionment Sutra

The smallest unit of hope
is fantasy—

I am wishing again for peace
though the razor, some minutes
ago, was pulled out of my right thigh,
stained. I

want to believe
loneliness, gutted, will reveal
the primacy of devotion, that
the body, in the absence of hands
holds itself. But look,

all this red, I am cordial with
disillusionment. Sometimes, all

a metaphor does is sharpen grief
or give it a new name. The truth is

all my life, even as I hewed
my childhood out of its innocence

I was a captive of tenderness
but mistook its shimmering
for the backside of an elegy.

The Sutra on Paternal Yearning

Always, I try to touch my father
but it is his religion I grasp, the insides
of his psalms, & benedictions.

My wet, tired, arms. It is their duty
to translate thunderous amens to warmth,

to echolocate his…