CONFESSION


CONFESSION


"So you're some kind of preacher?"

Cherisse fingers the
small silver pentacle 
that normally sleeps
beneath my shirt
now stained with
the dead leaf sweat
of September nights

"Sort of" I reply
half watching my
drink's head bubble
into oblivion "More
like a monk I suppose"

Our conversations
of necessity confined
to chance meetings
on hooker corners
or in hooker bars
meander between
the modern adept's
twin pillars of
alcohol and caffeine

"So you don't fuck?"

"Well I hear monks
do too sometimes"

"You ever make it with a nun?"

She teases like
a six year old
but it's late
and I know where
she hides her
straight razor

"I don't
know any nuns
I went to
public school"

"No I mean your kind of nun"

I try to imagine
the ladies of my coven
trading in their robes
of scarlet and storm
for basic black
their lusty canticles
and dances to Eris
for humble prayers
whispered into chalices
of sacrificial wine

"Only in church"
I smile

"I go to church sometimes"
she jumps
in and out
of a smile
"Jimbo doesn't like it though"

"Is that how you
got that shiner?"

A dirty black crescent
rings her left eye
bad for business
so her pimp
we've never met
(I think)
had disappeared
for a few days
leaving her food
but taking the money
I pay for the beer

"I still went and I dressed nice with my blue shawl covering my
hair and I lit a candle for my family and sang the hymns and
said Our Father and everything"

"Now I usually
say Our Mother"

"Huh?"

"My God is a Mother"

"Johnny that's rude"

I laugh "No Cherisse
not that kind of mother
I worship a Mother Goddess
you know just like those
myths and legends they
fed us in grade school"

"That's silly Johnny God's a man everyone knows that so why
would anyone even want to worship a girl?"

"Nobody ever
beat Her up"

She falls silent
our encounters often
end up this way
I open my big mouth
she shuts hers

She loves her Slain Hero
as I much as I love my
Lady of Fertile Tears
and I want to take
Cherisse's hand in mine
but I never touch her
because she touches
too many bodies already

I want to take my
pen and draw a small
cross on her palm
but I still cannot
breathe the name
of the God of my
renunciation

"I still went" she whispers to the table "Jimbo swore real bad
at me and I threw all kinds of shit at him and he slugged me
and ran out on me again but I still went and people were nice
to me and I even saw one of my regulars there"

I put the pretzel bowl
in front of her because
she likes pretzels and
she picks one up and
nibbles off the salt

"I'm broke too so I'm supposed to meet him tomorrow night"

She slows almost
to a freeze frame
lost perhaps in
the golden fields
of Indiana

"Can I get you
another beer?" I ask

Thus does a fallen nun
give confession to
a falling priest in
the Temple of the Damned
while outside
the World and the Word
meet beneath a streetlamp to
cruise in one another's vestments
recite one another's liturgies
eat one another's last meals
again and again and again
even unto dawn
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