by M.E. Walker

That was what the wild gnostics
called the orthodox bishops, with their dull rules,
those knife-sharp collars, that dried-up faith.

Me, I don’t mean it as an insult,
but simply as the cleanest description
of what’s happened to my own belief,
which neither slipped away in a rush of smoke
nor found itself cast joyfully down a mountainside
but instead, like some quiet waterway, drained
an eighth of an inch with each stunned and pained
expression I made when they asked me to defend it,
until at last the bed was parched, each conveying drop
slithered off into some prophet’s promising rock.

And yet, love, if my little river is gone,
then the treasures tossed into it
still stubbornly remain,
not just the eddies of dead fish
and the slurries of rank debris,
but a cork-stopped wine bottle here,
a parasol, dictionary, pocket watch there.

This rusty coin of intimate hope
Which still must count as currency somewhere.

M.E. Walker is a queer Jewish writer, performer, educator, and lifelong Texan. His poetry has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press and One Art, with work forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal. Find him on Instagram @walkertexaswriter31, or on what’s left of Twitter @texasnotranger.