Why you should subscribe to poem-a-day, and other uncomfortably sexy things...

This poem, um, is fabulous. These Hands, If Not Gods by Natalie Diaz.

Haven't they moved like rivers--
like Glory, like light--
over the seven days of your body?

And...

Aren't they, too, the dark carpenters
of your small church? Have they not burned
on the altar of your belly, eaten the bread
of your thighs, broke you to wine, to ichor,
to nectareous feast?

Seriously. Go. Read it. I'm not normally for weirdly erotic religious poetry, but if you pretend like this is about a super sexy lover, it makes you crave a cigarette and a glass of wine. Um. Or you feel really awkward afterwards. Look, I don't need to know about your hangups and you don't need to know about mine.

My favorite part is Natalie Diaz' about-this-poem:

The images and hands of this poem began building during Mass one Sunday. The reading was about the laying of hands on someone, and I began thinking of how my own hands work upon a body. How they do things both beautiful and awful—to gently trace a throat in one moment, to hold it tightly in another—a type of sweet wreckery that makes me feel godlike and helpless all at once.

If that kind of imagery was building up in my mind during church, I probably would have stayed Catholic. Damn.

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Cindy, Sam, me & some poetry: I stopped by Cindy's to go through her edits for record of night.

Meanwhile, my blogaversary is coming up tomorrow! I wish I could bake you all cookies. I might bake cookies anyway...  or buy them. And eat them. Without you. Okay, okay, I'll instagram you some photos, if you're sweet.

I don't think you're ready for this jelly.