More on: Paula Bohince

is holy, molten in its calcium cup, sun and moon mixed, hot in its prison, cells’ incentive to fuse firing, no second to loiter, calling now to a predator’s jaw. How the genetic vow is kept. Jellied not-yet, hard as thought becoming belief, little o in hope or love, un- umbilical one, cast into air,…

In creased coat, body beggar-curled, colored not the sky blue of Christ’s robe on the mount, nor his mother’s in the manger before she was haloed forever, but a bruising blue, indigo as blood trapped beneath flesh. What the drowned last see, sunk past light’s reach.      

Sentient, it seemed, the snowflakes’ descent, making a midair lake, hovering in the somewhere between weakness and ghost, careless as orchids after Christmas. Beyond the veil of a twelfth-century statue, one congregant took off his Reeboks to pray more ardently in the aisle. The monks were in agreement, voice-wise, with the twilight, the work of…