The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Love Letters from a Burning Planet by MJ Gomez

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Study of Daylight

The title is a lie—this poem is about daylight the way the page is
prostration to an unnamed god I never asked for water but thirst
walks in my stead bends these bones toward the desert where madmen
drink of longing and become famous for it              among them I see
Majnoon patron saint of ripped collars called lover called devotee
called insane by history he does not bend down to drink or pray

unlike the rest              he drinks standing and sleeps standing
his gold-plated longing adorns his shadow he who has lost his name
bows only to a beloved relieved to wake each morning a bleeding throat
and split calluses              he is the luckiest of us all              we who wander
for want of nothing envy the blood              red ants who utter no god’s name
rewarded with dust              twisting scripture to firewood for love named

after what is true and impossible               at daybreak I praise God
in a language I do not know except to praise with am I still a sinner
if I can only speak of forgiveness               to what drowns me
is a love unmoored enough to anchor my feet to               this bridge
of daylight upon daylight pinned by faith I pore through the translations
asking if faith is only for the willing               I check the back of my neck

and feel for God’s hundredth name with which the faithful may use to
guarantee an answer from beyond the veil and beyond the veil is a face
like mine a face not mine asks for forgiveness               the sky splits open
birds leap in fear of the trumpets               divinity boils away the water
                                          of the body
to make way                                                         for the sunrise and nothing else

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