Don’t Ask Me About the Hymns | Ezra Fox
~ after Michael Kleber-Diggs’s “Coniferous Fathers”
i.
Speak to me about the boys. Sunday armor
ill-fitting and incomplete. Their starched
collars yet scuffed soles. I bow to no deity,
still I watch their lips, shape words
like abomination and love while knelt
in this stained-glass aquarium, swaying
to currents of guilt and glory,
as if still nestled in the flood
of their mothers’ wombs.
ii.
Only in dreams do we truly sing,
limbs unfurling like hesitant ferns.
In sleep, we are all Davids dancing
before the ark, unashamed.
iii.
After service, these boys, with patent leather
dulled to scars, litanies already fading
from their tongues, weave through each other
like water. Even their shadows play
at holiness, neckties slipping off like shed skin.
The chain-link net singing its metallic psalm,
each rebound a confession, each shot arcing
towards grace.
iv.
They don’t yet know which rituals they’ll spend
lifetimes unlearning, or how fiercely they’ll cling
to the sacrament of touch long after the sermon fades.
Ezra Fox reads their poem…
about the author:
When I hear “good life,” I think of my life. It wasn’t always like this. There were many years where I didn’t feel like this life was even worth living. But now, when I hear “good life,” I can just think of my life, how I cannot remember the last day I went without laughing. To me, my good life is how easy it is to laugh with my partner Annalise, how we laugh many times throughout the day until our stomachs ache. In that pang in our ab muscles, in the tears rolling down our cheeks, in the echoing of our laughter, I don’t have to think it—I can feel that this is a good life.
Ezra Fox lives and writes in San Francisco, CA. In their writing, Ezra is curious about impermanence, and non-duality, and how it pertains to their subjects of lineage, queerness, and spirituality. You can find Ezra’s work in or forthcoming in TriQuarterly, EcoTheo Review, Zone 3, Zócalo Public Square, and elsewhere. Learn more about Ezra at ezrafox.net.