No keening hymn or fevered prayer will ever wake you
from that marble city where the dark hearse takes you.
Can you feel the beetles gnawing at your skin?
How long before the worms and maggots’ feast remakes you?
I seek through yellowed codices by candlelight.
I must resurrect you. My heart will never forsake you.
You stand in darkness, bleeding flesh pulled away
from bone. Even in your rot, I’d never mistake you.
Come to bed, my love. Curl into my arms.
Kiss me into the morning when the tomb retakes you
BIO: Joshua Gage is an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His newest chapbook, Origami Lilies, is available on Poet’s Haven Press. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He has a penchant for Pendleton shirts, Ethiopian coffee, and any poem strong enough to yank the breath out of his lungs.