Dancer

The purple Easter-egg mouth

on Salome's lavender platter

belongs to John the Baptist

of Trinity Episcopal Church.

Sunday tunnels through his shout |

and pitches up the darkness dirt

around Father Bell's silhouette

and the black text.

I bow like a walking stick

to the carnival light on the black text,

to the physics of local apocalypse:

the head on the guillotine gallows

mine until the shoulder blade slips,

the grave with my place saved.