The Book of Mormon

by Lauren Goodwin Slaughter

Knapsacks of gold light

unzip, flooding the room
with earnestness—it rises over

us three like a bonanza
or a huge ochroid wish.

The old moonclock ticks. I look at the fish
above the mantle and its sword

is bluer, deader than before—
On the couch, the boy

to my left shifts into
the ice water I've poured without spilling for him, one dark loop

of hair unravels into C—
(I've tried, I almost say—he's quiet, though, like me.)

A lion

full-blushed and now, the other
starts to back-and-forth

sweating through his clean, nice, white shirt
starting to stink like sports

and sex his black tie comes undone
a little as he turns my serious delicate

question into phosphorescent animation

—into fireflies going

circumference, circumference, circumference!

Beam: I am: the quiet one
leans in with his tongue

and whispers, there-there, so-so in his lovely
line but I get only the wet

cold something you step
on you don't know the origin of.