Denise Newman
Glory

if juice leaks out in the face of what man can do,

a rose out of season in the garden of a ruin, if anyone ever steals,

knows not how useless

when sex contains everything, hence the madness, that is, after the fall,

young tigers in the face of being, without hope or

fear, and if one goes ahead and harms then he is

an ass, and therefore sees a

hierarchy, and if those refusing to look up to the face of an

ass are as little fish naturally generous, if customs

weren’t as such and a face could not be lost or out of fashion,

Beauty goes to him

if she must, but will not marry, in other words, submit to sex,

in the face of injury-in-motion, needing a foothold,

if sex were a heavenly net of every

living, safety in it, as in the bosom of God, his jerky

movements, coming toward her, sing

a Glory Be, from sorrow, that is, purely,

without thought of personal gain, if one breast pops off,

then the other, so like cabbages, looking down as if one were made

to witness this hour, this soft light, on golden grass,

the girl singing “cut cut the sweet smell of you”

to every living, if Beauty

returns to find him dying under a pile of rotting

cabbages, and is moved to say, I do, will, marry

and if by these words he’s transformed into a beauty like herself, then

what is it that covers over that sex reveals