the patron saints of infidelity ride underground
to the boardwalk, to stand as close to the ocean as they dare
while the carnies bellow last call, for a limited time only
and don't know how close to the truth they're speaking.
The patron saints are just sinners with miraculous diction.
They're often mistaken for nothing they can prove or venerate.
Below their palms there are splinters, below the crumbling rail
there is a last remaining temple of cruelty, a cave mouth tent
where the hand lettered sign reads: Shoot the Freak.
She, let’s call her Water, ignores the sign, points to the sand
And says, slipping. Says, go. Says there are castles he could build,
to the west, well out of sight of her house. Water turns
and whispers in her sometime lover’s ear, she says, horizon.
Says, leave now and we’ll call it even.
He, we’ll call him Horn, lifts his eyes to the clear sky,
and calls out to the birds that circle their heads hoping
for carrion. In the October breeze, Water believes the words
that hurricane from his lips are a prayer and a curse
as she’s believed those lips to be balm, to be drowning.
But beneath the din of the birds, the crashing sea, the yells
of the already scattering carnival folk could he be telling a secret?
What he says is, look love- the Freak I feared that everyone could see.
The eroded jaw, the sludge puddled skin, the flaw in the way
that I'm drawn to mirrors and bullets and drowning.
