Marilyn Westfall
My Brother’s Matins
Most mornings he says thanks
for coffee, fresh jelly donuts,
fast food burritos, homemade
French toast with syrup,
but if I shop at Lucky Seven,
purchase him a carton of cheap
menthol cigarettes, he’ll clutch
the laminated box to his naked chest,
hurry to the bathroom mirror,
reach upward with his free hand
to palm the moon-white ceiling
with nicotine-stained fingertips,
and pray in glossolalia
to his reflection, symmetrical as
Renaissance sculpture, Angelic,
old nuns and priests would say,
when he served as altar boy,
kindling candles from a taper
with the same grace of flicking
a lighter red as stained glass.
New poems by Marilyn Westfall are published in Duality, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, and Dream Noir.