Selected Poems

Lanny Visits a Pentecostal Church

When the light begins to slant through windows, 
falling soft and unheard into the lap 
of a girl beside him, Lanny believes, 
and tries to speak to her in a tongue 
he has never known. His ecstatic words 
are deliberate, taken from her prayer,
her stretching arms, the smell of her hair.
He fits her name into his mouth again
and again, until it slips over his tongue 
like bread or wine to become
one with his body. He reaches for all 
he wants to understand, moving like wind,
like the flames coming down through stained glass to fall 
upon the beautiful face of the deep.

(published in The Hollins Critic)