Priest opens a desert fist a red fish, regards with one eye heavens as sun crackles tattoos on his face. “I beg you destroy my affection,” he says in blood and sand flows from his morning feet. The ceremony that devoured his son casts a rut to the far edge of the earth. The crease that canyons his life into two pieces swarms with abuse. But he cannot consume the knife, for habit of existence. He cannot swallow his own cruel stake.

This piece first appeared in Ditch Poetry, January 2014.