Night Became Years. Jason Stefanik

fusty folds

      of grunge cardigans, oversized sweats, and clashing plaids.

      Their same self-medicated mumblecore I recognize.

      We form a party to attack the corroded bicycle padlocked

      to a church fence. We’re undeterred by the slow pass

      of police. We batten and bilk with snickery gibberish

      at the Gospel Union Outreach Wagon, and absorb

      flashlight probing for coffee and beef broth

      from med-school undergrads. Off the overpass,

      we bivouac in the rivets of an industrial park,

      where we can pull off our balaclavas and squat

      beside the grates blowing hot factory air, to share

      our fresh cuts of dog tail roasted over paint can.

Scanterbury Church

      Wind will compound to blanch fields as bone;

      twilight bleeds now like hamstrung venison.

      A lakeside sharpens into jagged stone

      that can cut a hoof, but nothing crosses here

      where kin dissolves into chalk-dry overtone.

      Who is a symmetry without bearing –

      we’ve backed the liars, everything will perish.

      Before and after this world, we’re alone,

      while all fails from birth canal to casket.

      Sun and snow will crystal-film as one.

      On steeple and headstone, frost catches shine.

      Who knows when the last parishioner came

      to slouch at a pew in doleful antiphon,

      to hear the wind beat through the rickety gate

      like a skull shrieking blasphemies, and sense