a poem by niel rosenthalis

Prayer


He showed me the minisculeness that sex is.
Also its largeness—it can fill a day, a life.
There were other cautions, caught up as branches

In a mind too blue to be other than the deep it  wasn’t
Prepared to fully be, not even as green was to me
The side of any noun that rolled before me to a halt.

Hilt. Silt of the inexpert yet adamant, clueless with
Miscordium, pale strum of paler guitars where
The meanings are—they make such high brights fall.

Fall unbelievably. He was, he was, he was.
Now clamped to the tense whose tension I knew
Would come and yet like a shopping mall—albeit very

Green with new trees—spring up as shock,
Interruption, bang in the brighter fang of time.
All my words gone from me in other directions than

Even I can pull together, to show you what I mean by
Pain, plenty, beauty; beauty the plenary string
Whose suspension must cost almost nothing, and this

From me whose arm has been holding it up here all
This time—pre-made example, sample. He was,
He was, and yet the founded coil of us meant great

Pleasure, leisure whose ends would mend when
Brought together. That I could, have to, weather him.
He was. The sanctified purr of the gone—amen.





Niel Rosenthalis lives in Brooklyn, NY. He has a critical essay forthcoming from the Los Angeles Review of Books. In the fall he will begin his M.F.A. in the Writing Program at Washington University in St. Louis.