Fundamental Voodoo

In the body’s long remembrance,
he stirs: born of fracture and hand-mark,
bled through, part sheet, part stone.

How can he bear the dim and ill, the priest
dissembling to god, the miniature execution,
the chalice of coughing and gall, our fever

to bring him back, palms and candles held high?
As a smoke tosses forth into stained glass light
we all look worse, unhealed. In the look of a man

unable to speak is something that darkens a room.
Display your dolls both holy and crude, lids fluttering
at the monstrance. Pray him back to his home

of stone where all four windows are scratched
with crosses, where holy water at all four corners
will settle him, struggling, down.