Citygoer’s Genesis

Above the U.S. Embassy a flag flies, flayed
as my mother. Wind slices Siberian through monsoon,
swollen as my mother, c-section of seven layers. Asphalt

is origin and plow fallow alleys over fell
trees and fell houses. In its wake roads
wind trenchant and sterile through the city,

new veins. Let there be another Achilles who girds himself
under the alley’s slim arch, slouches to divide blood-rusted land
from blood-rusted water, bereft of wrath.

Before I held death in my hands I held
a TV remote that taught me how trees blossomed
fruit and deer feared tigers and god saw that it was good.

If you live to a hundred years old journey to the city
again and you will see its distortion, monolith
and suspended and you will ask

Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus, what
do I do when what is within a place is without me,
when what is within me is without god, something lost
between engravings?

Dissonance is when I say now, trace the hand
groping soft flesh as if you’re in kindergarten. Cleave
its print into stone and let your palm hew to it.