Two Poems by G. C. Waldrep

BROKEN THINGS

Morwenstow

You stow them to the rear of worship: bits of jagged iron,candle nubs, miscellaneous gears and levers, each perfectunto itself but useless apart from its fellows. The humanback is meant to bear this weight: cable spools, dustyvases. Here is a picture of Christ, and here is a picture ofChrist. Imagine the eyes first, oblique timepieces uponwhich vision prints. I cough up a tooth, mature and perfect.It glistens in my hand. The chancel remains locked,nursing its treasures with a dim milk. I can just feel thetooth resting in the center of my palm; I shift it slightly,its planes mazing the half-light. Is it broken, I ask myself.Is it worship. Every century or four someone scrubs theimages from the walls and replaces them with new images.A fish. A crown. A scythe. See, this special niche forbooks from which pages have been torn. You may openand close them: an almanac, a lab manual, a toddler’spop-up fable. In my hand I am still holding this singletooth, which my body offered up. It is not, to my knowledge,mine. I imagine the dark chancel full of teeth, a mouthsewn shut. GO FIND OUT THE ARROW instructsthe legend in the glass, that falls on me. Nowhere is therespeech or talk of mending. A child’s collage, a crackedslate. I can’t decide where to leave the tooth: in the LadyChapel, by the font, at the ad hoc altar to war veteransin the north aisle. The tooth requires neither assembly norinstruction. It is a cool kernel in my outstretched hand.So I swallow the tooth. In this way I turn my back onworship. I take it with me, away from the splintered tableleg, the xylophone missing a key, the saints’ tongues,