Theology

i.

I dreamt he came back grinless

saying no afterlife and so had left

the tunnel undoing himself

with a coat hanger

crawling legs first

back through the noose

ii.

Some eulogies later I was in his room,

raking a pen across his notebook

to bring the words up from their graves

but nothing comes back. Maybe a god

will appear (wait) in a puff

from my half-empty bottle. Later I brushed

a knife against my skin; like an Isaac

or a lamb smeared over doors.

iii.

Tragedy is

the gawker’s word:

the white tarp stretcher

lifted to the ambulance-lip

as the body breaks

into news of the body