Dear Nephew
BY BRIAN TIERNEY
Too much hope bloats the peasants was an old Church tenet.
Your grandpa told me. He was a Catholic Priest, did you know that?
When I’d finally asked him why he left
he answered: ‘after years of waiting nothing came . . .’
Maybe waiting is what faith is. The way he’d patiently sip low-
grade vodka from wax-paper cups most days all day
to sand away his burrs, which grew back every morning.
As for me, after I learned Mark’s gospel I knew how things would end
I knew The State would win. Three more times.
And when I crossed the street to where no son is saved
it hurt to change, even though it was best to.
I think for god to believe in me is what I’d wanted.
This Easter, I heard through swung-open doors congregants singing as one
Were you there? Were you there? Let me tell you, Lan, I wasn’t;
I was in a car driving north passing San Quentin listening to Dylan sing
the presidents, too, must sometimes have to stand naked.
The Year Of Losses
BY BRIAN TIERNEY
The sky stayed blue but everything had ended.
Hank, whom we buried last spring, called it the year of losses.
Last wrongs. Even-ifs that didn’t move
the weather, a permanent summer
on which tyranny hung itself,
and small fires, large ones, second jobs, thirds—
According to Hannah it was not a place to love.
While we queued for pastry, having already chosen
one of four fruited, sugar-lacquered roses in the feuilleté style,
Mary for her part said: life’s still strewn with miracles, though.
That night, in April, I smoked Blue Dream and counted
apricots on the path; there were more in that one patch
than seconds in a minute, than cops on a beat, than times
the universe still whispered its own name
in the quiet when shaving,
or in the stillness with which ranunculi unravel,
or in the first eight notes of “Opening” by Glass,
and beef-cheek tacos,
tonkatsu with bitter greens,
a good draught of Guiness on very clean lines—
Sometimes dancing, sometimes unexpectedly
helping each other . . .The doomed old
and the dead young, John joked.
In all the greatest stories people come together.
