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DAPHNE DiFAZIO


CRETIN LYRIC

Inert Now, the skiff, crashed—
Greenish, I skirt shadow, world

Sideways with rain—salt water,
Scrub the dogfish shark blood

Smell from my laces, presence
Is not pain tracing the spit

Opposite stillness—To touch
What your father said into

Me, once, and never again
                         about each star

––––

THE MONASTIC REPUBLIC OF MOUNT ATHOS

A system of fist-sized bricks stacked
To build a god-shaped door. The last

In a house of martyrs. Another register
For love. A lesser sin than any, if Lot

Wouldn’t have offered his daughters.
Rinsing stones to savor the mineral

Facts, needles amounting to a sour
Bouquet—not the memory of eyes

Above, announcing a dead interior.
A small pack of young dun swans.

My mother’s transparency adjusting.
My father’s skinned jaw and trumpets

Of columbine. All I knew before touch
Spoiled, since Sodom. Now the faithful

Stretch the morning in contactless pact.
Rose bushes burning for his nose alone.

––––

THE MONASTIC REPUBLIC OF MOUNT ATHOS

You can say anything to an angel. You can
Tell the story of a father carrying his lamb

To the top of the bell tower: Grey stone.
Grey sky. The distance—a swift descent,

Silver tangle, stilling lungs. Once raptured,
You read gore as scripture: The humming

Membrane between threat and command.
You couldn’t watch, without knowing

When he’d die—how the circles spread—
Miasma setting inside an eye.

––––

PASSAGE GRAVE

                                                                                                                                                                    Rene is a no-good. I sent him away.
                                                                                                                                                                                                  Ralph Freedman

I geometrize a need for limitless

design. Rain forth—four wings

make a halo silent: He's dead.

I follow birds to their still point.

Birds live on falling through

one shared gasp toward

action. The hum

of something in surgical

rest, the center of everywhere's

mechanical vision. I met Rilke

and his angel dressing across

our mineral relationship to sea.

Drone Age, burial ground, lightweight

plastic whirr—literally watch—recording

the stones to elsewhere: what clouds

store over white quartz, scorched cairns.

––––

Daphne DiFazio is a poet, performer, and editor in Texas. Find her online at daphnedifazio.com.