we’d spend every sunday slurping him up,
my boyfriend and i blowing bubbles in jaded
mason jars, carving glass shards like ice cubes
melting in the sun. across the street communion
is held and christ whispers forgiveness
is the ultimate miracle and he’s drowned out
by the purr of the soda fountain, the electric
limbs crinkled on radio, dishes bludgeoned
by man’s spongey hand. across the street they eat
christ’s body and drink christ’s blood and the girl
across the counter slides us our bill, baptized
in burger grease, the sweat of truck drivers departing
for pilgrimage, forgiveness walking plagues
through her desperate eyes. i realize i can’t
pay the $7.30. i’m saying sorry to her and i don’t know why
my boyfriend steps in the bathroom and i follow, daniel
in the lion’s den. he’s standing on a toilet, staring
past the clerestory at christ’s mansion, staring
at children watered down holy, expunged of sin, staring
as they scrounge church buses, their shoes melting
the pagan asphalt.
they’re pointing at the rainbow
-striped diner, forgiveness walking that bleeding
tightrope between their lips.
Daniel Zhang is an Asian-American poet from Watchung, New Jersey. His poems have been published in Jet Fuel Review and are forthcoming in The Lumiere Review.
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