The Arava Review

Over arroyos and desert cobble
through the wood gate
past collapsing thatch
awnings and eaves
where gnatcatchers and grackles
twitch and flaunt
in the fonts
of mixing bowls where
we put our hands
into the birds and water
and kneel and press a thumbprint
of dust
to our lips
scar the sign of the cross
in the air we
of the creosote
we the vulture
we bless this
cross of nails
the nail heads softened
with stones
with cracked hammers
and later years later
when the nails
fall finally from
the crumbling planks
of palm wood
the baked trees
we will hammer
ourselves
to the Lord
and nothing
will pry us free.

Greg Lawless

Gregory Lawless is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poems, interviews and reviews have appeared in or are forthcoming from such venues as 2River View, the Ampersand Review, Artifice, Best of the Net 2007, The Cortland Review, Drunken, H_NGM_N, The Hollins Critic, Sonora Review, and Zoland Poetry. He has recently been nominated for a Pushcart and for Best of the Net. BlazeVOX published his first collection of poems, I Thought I Was New Here, in 2009. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts.