Acts Of Worship

An echo of an oath
between bride and bridegroom
tumbles through the desert
and falls between rocks.

An unwelcome wilderness
grows inside me: locoweed
jutting from the compacted dirt,
a grandpa who starts masturbating at a party.

Out of acts of worship, a silent answer rumbles:
boys playing war in Egyptian eyeliner, grown men
buckled up to bumper cars and serpents,
longed-for peace in the goat hair of the cilice.