Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
https://griffinpoetryprize.com/press/2023-longlist-announcement/
Priest
He returned the next night, and as he was climbing
I was thinking of the slaps on Jesus’ face, which were
also ascending with him. “Finally, who are you?” I asked;
“I was always somewhere else”, he said and the walls
cracked of the deadly sin.
I, kneeling on the floor, licked that stain from an old
childhood celebration, a strong wind was blowing
in the hallway, the skylight was filled with voices and
bloodied clothes while the servant girls moaned
in the basement.
A certain crime was unfolding in the house, and when
blood flowed up to the stairway, I saw that my days
resembled dead lice on the coffins of the needy and
at night, I travelled with an old sofa as the reflections
of the candles, of course, opened the walls, although
humiliation helped a lot, and when dawn came, the priest
wrapped my severed head with a newspaper like
a borrowed icon.
Libros Libertad 