Vanities
Imagine yourself freed
from God. First an emptiness;
a new testament. A part excised
which you don’t know
how to live without. Thus far, it has leadened you.
Then you see that no one
ever really needed to die. Now when you expire,
the sun sets with you. There are a million
sons and none of them are ever sacrificed.
In the space between words,
where once you would have inserted yourself
into ritual, you will find desire;
that’s where God used to be. (That dark hole
you should have seen coming.) Tumble into it.
xxxxxxxAbyss. In the old world,
You could feel yourself made other. Rethinking
your longings: destruction originates
from language, which bloomed
from desire. How desperately
we wanted to name
this yearning. How we have ached for someone
to care for us. (What if you held me
like I meant something?) When you tell the world
what you want, it gives to you without fail
the opposite, so we learned
how to hate each other. I imagine this
obliterated; there is such warmth between us.
Anderson Peguero II is a writer and artist primarily based out of New York City. He designs and edits the annual Fountain City Poetry Slam chapbook collection. His poetry has appeared in Boston Accent Lit, Bad Pony Mag, Quarto Magazine, the Journal of Art Criticism, and more. He currently studies social work on the masters level at New York University.
