Anastomosis
by Rob Rice
Finding himself on his knee
For the first time
Communing drunk
With a looming stranger
Whose helper’s motive is likely vanity?
But it could have gone just as easily the other way
That dangerous edge
Of sudden starving
Could have found himself
Snapping like the outing twig in a stalking
A bone not his
Just as easily
He could have
A real random nothing of circumstance
Deciding the difference
Between supplication and sin
Refined crude cowardice
Them equal, inevitable products?
Or one in the other in the
Same translations of the same text
Inscriptions revealed
By a broad and blanket washing
Disinterred and still breathing predecessors
Overtly returned to the wheel
The release-need insists
And mode specificity fails to relate
Apology and attack
As long as exertion
Liberates some fluid like a lancing
There’s no more a man there than before or after
But at a glance a god residually a glint on him
