the body is a dirty dancer, yet holy

ernest O. Ogunyemi

hold still, I tell this body,

I tell it only the tail of a lizard untailed

from its body dances without music dances

without end. this body doesn’t hear my voice, this body

goes on dancing: the only way it knows to survive.

tie it down and it will 

end.

the stream was never meant to rest,

or rather, the stream’s rest is to be no river.

my body is 

no river. 

my father calls me riverboy, I say

I am not. he says my shame knows no clothes.  

knees buried deep 

in sand by a seaside, a man in a soutane

presses his fingers in my mouth 

to uproot confessions, I tell him:

this body is no sin—holy, holy; this body; God. 

God made this body holy.