(inspired by two poems. The first is "Memo from the Desk of X" by Donald Justice. The second is "Like Gods" by John Koethe) God, make this desk bleed the consubstantiation of me. What Divinity I might have, make its stain spill out in letters in words, in imagery, in faith, in raspberries, in feathers, in heaven. I'm crying citrus to an aluminum ceiling Hard rain splatters back. Silence. Mine is a desk of flat packed pressed wood. My shoe is as real as my sole. It walks on earth, on concrete, on asphalt in rain, in snow, in heat, in gloom of night. This is a field divided the poetry of possibilities versus the prose of facts. My soles stamping out rhythm My soul exiled into night A stanza as vivid as a crow in the snow. Good night to dreams no night for dreams Let wine be for forgetting. Step over the wire and embrace the facts. The Justice Memo received let poems go extinct.