God of Destruction
Joanna Valente

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Somewhere in Brooklyn
angels are fucking

in the ocean, but there is no
home in the ocean

who knew there would be so much
blood

in a seashell.

*

He folded his map
of the solar system, threw
it into sea when he left
home

through a piece
of a broken milk bottle.

The wall of sound plays
when a man & a woman
36 inches separated carve a boy
into stone

sundial, can’t see sky can’t
keep watch.

His hands were 5 once,
learning how to kneel
inside St Patrick’s

in the dark inside a bone
priest’s skull are countless fireflies
scattered & fucking

in the wreckage of a car
crash, a dollar-store poem grows

roots gray & full of lesions,
says,

I don’t know how to miss you.

Within a pulse, an erection,
then the page, then a sext.

No one is outside raking the leaves.
Then, the L is delayed,
love story.

Then swimming in a gelatinous
ocean no waves, just purple
light depending on where you

float—every corner a new
world, a new word veiled
by a man & a woman, one hand
throwing rocks to make a grave

the other making love
digging through the sand

some men will bury anything
like a grave.