two poems

by Daniel Edward Moore

Present to the Body, Absent from the Lord

On a masculine river of glittering garbage,

what if you’re stripped of revelation’s distortion

before being submerged in intellect and lust?

Could you trust the hands holding your head

in a baptism long overdue? When religion floats

by like a wounded lamb with holes that beg to

be filled with faith, remember you’re more than

a midnight meal for wolves with eyes on you.

Being present to the body means absent from the Lord

and nothing’s more delicious than that.

Murmuring at the Tran-Sub-Station

                                                                 was what it sounded like

as the blood and wine in every house

made the sacramental shocking

in crystal goblets gently filled

by the anemic and inappropriate.

Here, lips obediently swallow

the laws of drunken gods and

salvation is delusional, making

the real, unreal.

Original sin needs original lies

to feed this ungodly body.

You can burp me like a baby

but bruise me like a man.

Photo of Daniel Edward Moore

BIO: Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His work has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, North American Review and others. His work is forthcoming in Action Spectacle Magazine and New Plains Review. His book, Waxing the Dents, is from Brick Road Poetry Press.