Two Poems
by Ryan Boyd

trigger warning: trigger, warning

precursor: god had fuck-all
to do with the trigger, click,
nothing, spared a second
time, and what kind of prick

can’t kill himself right? or
put it another way, how
can the universe, that big
unblinking thing behind a desk

sneeze the same way twice?
lives get spent in the space
it’d take to heave an angel
between pistol and temple,

the occupied chamber and the quiet
that follows your finger, and instead
of the quiet you need, you get
a blank like a missing laughtrack

for try number two. so you’re jesus,
you’re lazarus, some biblical fuckup
just couldn’t get it done, the final
temptation of saint indifference,

and you can’t bribe the big nothing
with thirty pieces for an ending
that fits

O Typekey Divider

you ask why

& I say, I need to climb

. . . the wounds like ladder rungs

. to god. think homemade stigmata,

think wine drenches wafer.

you say, you don’t even believe

. . in god. semantics: even saint

stephen got his slice of heaven

when the rocks broke him open.

. . . . . I say, god is sacrifice,

. . . . the kind that comes from

. . sharp flashes on the road to damascus,

from expiation yanked out of you. better

. . . . . . . . for you to enter the kingdom

. . . . . . . . . of heaven with a few missing fingers–

. . . . . no, you say, you do it

. . . to heal somebody’s wounds, anyone’s. you

. . . ask me why I want to be my own

. . . . . . . . . . makeshift jesus so goddamn badly.

as a blessed martyr,