FUNERAL ORNAMENT WITH HALF-PALMETTE (III) 

Anderson Peguero II

Not a night in nine years has gone by in which I forget

To obliterate myself. Prayer is only

The reduction of all I am into ritual. I figure

I’m frail enough. If this body can fit

Into the space between the words of the Lord,

Maybe He will overlook me. Everything

Can fit into ritual; all the shame of autonomy decimated

And replaced with the facelessness of worship.

People like me go missing all the time,

Mama used to say, tucking me in and making sure to retrieve the

Small pink pocket New Testament from under pillow.

You have to know when you pray that you will be disappointed,

She would whisper, after a tender smooch to my forehead.

What I remember is the very same kiss bestowed upon

Aunt Spotty at her wake. As it turns out, her prayers couldn’t

Annihilate the cancer, but it could convince God

To take her away instead. Don’t ask to be healed: ask

To be claimed. After it all, we become servants of one god

Or another. Without even knowing it, I used to pray

For God to be the one to find my soul first

If I were ever to go missing. Does it seem like he’s listening

To you?

There is an intimacy like nothing else

In prayer with an audience. Remember, in the black of the basement,

I am reading very slowly a letter to my father

And God. (If you go too quickly, you could blur

Between the lines, and become invisible again.)

I remember the man after, golden ankh heavy around his neck,

How instead of a prayer he gives a sermon. His name

Might have been Peter. Three times he states how disappointed he was

By my supplication. The agony, tearing him asunder,

To hear a fellow black man relinquish his faith. From my fellow

Black men, I have only ever been

Relinquished.

Anderson Peguero II (he/him/his) is a writer and artist primarily based out of New York City. is a writer and artist based in New York City. He has a number of passions ranging from visual art to photography to creative writing. His poetry has appeared in Figure One, Bad Pony Mag, Quarto Magazine, and more. He graduated from Columbia University in 2019 with a degree in psychology. Learn more on his website.