Letter To Valentinius (c.140)

by David Hunter Sutherland

Beloved,

She wriggles of life.
Wrapped in a palm,
pale like gypsum's
flakes of ivory.
She wriggles of life,
carved in the harsh erotics and
pews whose albumens of flesh
awe back her presence....

Belonging,
on her first day
belonging,
her mouth was yours,
her lips,
statutes of a testament
of a tribe gone mad.

Beloved,
bring me your visions
your allusion on mule,
your fires' brightest Channels
(Meshach, Shadrach, Abdenago)
your psychic, high on
wooden monocles
whose talk of
animal theism, desert terror, phantasm,
are veins in the cataclysms of her palm.
This world is
enough
my love,
tell the believers
your daughter has name.

Faithfully yours,