A Fanatic Writes His Ex
- A believer who cheats on one god will betray the god he worships on the side.
- If a god cheats on a believer, the believer must not weep. The god may have his reasons.
- Gods on the run hide out in atheists’ brains.
- Once we made a god together, kiss by kiss.
- Now some Luther nails his theses to your door.
- You shower him with indulgences. You raise him from the dead. You feed him like a multitude.
- You have set fire to our days together, but our hearts are still entangled, like photons mirroring each other’s every move a galaxy apart.
- All day I feel your thoughts brush against mine like the breeze of angels passing. Admit you feel mine too.
- When I picked up the phone, there was your voice again, filling my head, warm as the dove come back from the flood.
- You said it was the speed dial’s fault, but find me a holy book with a single coincidence.
- Therefore I recite this catechism, eyes shut tight, head full of your scent, your taste writing its 95 theses on my tongue.
- Some wise man said, the disease of belief will not tolerate a cure.
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Michael Collins’ poems have appeared in About Place, The Rupture, New Letters, Marsh Hawk Review, Callaloo, and elsewhere. His prose has appeared in Harper’s, The Oxford American, the blog of Academe magazine and elsewhere. His most recent book is The Anti-Civil Rights Movement: Affirmative Action as Wedge and Weapon (University Press of Kansas, 2024).