THE ESSAY ON FAITH
exordium
hile sound and seaworthy, I confess a life of false confessions, false hearts, ample contempt for bench warrants charging me with failures to appear. Let what interest death’s elbow grease won’t erase compound, judgments sealed in my ova, my oeuvre, my juvie, and on Q-tips scribbled like rice grains with the starshine of my stem cells. Yardsell my cracked hourglass, my salt-crusted astrolabe, my maps of the lunar seas. Collect my student IDs, my employee discounts, my almost-winning scratch-off. Take my voice mails from the clouds. Dismantle my altar to Walter Mercado, phrenologist of the stars. But stay memory, time’s plagiarist. Stay poem, spare
