Though I the dead should fall

Though I the dead should fall
White night sky
The curve of the dome
Its etchings cut into the steel
Thunder bursting off
Curling over our bodies

Where you rise
Slow demon
My brother who chose hell
A thousand generations ago

All of it’s coming to an end
These lies you’ve been telling

What is the fluid of pain
Distilled
Mercurochrome
Two triangles
Trapped together
Trapping you

Though I should be dead and rising
Watching your eyes turn inward
Like a suicide
Watching the men you kill
Turn away from the bullet
Into the light
I am alive

They say you became us
Took our book and wrote your names into it
Like a peculiar jealousy
And then, with your magic
Or, through some horror of our own
Believed what you had written
Forgetting all of our ancestral stories
Like palimpsests
Washed out by the priest

The ark within us
A character smudged off
Some hunk of memory
Some lizard tail
Cut into the sky
Regrowing

We the light
Not only the camera
Come down into the tunnels
To bring light into the corners
To record all of your crimes

Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming in 1979. You can read more of his work at www.robindunn.com. Read other articles by Robin.