print previewback JORDAN RICE
Epithalamion
From here, nowhere’s absent shame. The body’s
rumored dissolute for its mutability. Even speech—
the clear-spoke & the speaking, my mind’s aroar in
hoary rasp. No voice carries. I try every one, even
apology & rhetoric: the apsis of our fall. Listen.
Around us whirs the sex I’m to become—violent,
exact. I etch up another voice within your silence.
Say I’m sorry. Say I am sorry. Say again I had no choice.
I lost one self to this other & killed our child’s father.
He’ll keep me in old photos: thin frame, red beard.
Barbarossa, our priest once called me. What will he
tell our son? —Your father disappeared. Speaking
with the dead makes witchery. He transubstantiated.
There was no sign of this proclivity when I bound
them at the wrists & blessed them by our custom. 
