A good word 

When I died, they painted me.

Blue on the veins for piety,

though I had often felt myself unholy.

At the funeral, my daughter stood to speak

and forgot for fifteen seconds the name

of the dog I had rescued from the lake,

then told more stories of whenever it was

when I wasn’t young. Not her fault.

She had only known me then.

My friends were often careless with each other.

My friends were the best people in the world.

At parties, I liked to blush my knuckles,

after the fashion of an older decade.

When I was three or four,

someone, for the very first time,

asked me my name.

CHURCH 

Clear-sides-fish and gut-show.

Telling this now, I could weep

saying blue. A window wants

you feeling abstract. Visual.

One too many. One, two,

many. And summat Pantocrator

says three for His bonanza.

God awesome, God awful, God

falafel. Jupiter. Dew patter.

Fulgurous inchworm makes kids

if you like it. Makes kin. Been that

believer. Been even that believer

believes in. Winch. Linch pin.

When God goes out, He goes in.

Tony DiCarlo is a poet and translator originally from Northern California. He received his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and currently lives in Wellington where he is discovering the wonders of the meat pie and springtime in October. His work has previously appeared in Antiphony, HAD, and Palette, among others.