I met the Bishop on the road
and much said he -- same old porridge
I heard as a child, my little body
a “foul sty.” 

“Love has pitched his mansion.”  Maybe
Love pitched her silken tent. 
Love has raised its dwelling in
the place of reproduction, which can be

fitted with a full moon device

which functions as a saving grace.
And maybe everything can be rent,
everything can be sole or whole -- like an

asshole.  I met a Bishop, once,
when I was a teenager mad as hell about
eternal fire and birth control.
We were sitting in my mother’s living room --

for I have built my poems in

a place of opulent privilege --
I held out my fingers, and wiggled them at him,
and said “I’m trying to make you levitate.”

He was not holding his crook, or his mitred
hat, but he was wearing a shirt
of magenta Egyptian cotton, woven and

dyed only for Bishops, and I said,
 

thinking myself
quite the witty brat,
“That is the most beautiful shirt
I have ever seen, could you get me a shirt

like that?” 
Not seeing myself, the privilege
and ignorance of coming from a living room
like that.