by Tania Runyan
AFTER REVELATION 9
All that grace wasn’t working
anymore, the Kincaid prints
and purpose-driven songs,
kids star-charting memorized verses.
He needed something big, something
like a horse with an exoskeleton
and a supermodel’s hair.
Smoke, breastplates, crowns.
The people clawed the walls of ambulances.
They writhed in hospital hallways
until released back to parking lots
shrilling with yellow-gauze wings.
I thought it a little much, scorpion tails
shooting people in grocery aisles,
knocking them down at bus stops
until they locked themselves inside,
shivering as the hissing shook their windows.
But what did I know? Some of them
began to sing. Some of them collapsed
in prayer to their tormenter.
After five months of venom in their veins,
some of them fell paralyzed in love.
