Hearts of Heretics

My heart is the heretic.
Sometimes, sometimes a hush is louder than an infinity
of funerals.

Her silence coaxed men from their reptile skin.
You should not know but you already do.

Parlor of secret dancers.
Woven sky webs.
Raucous charioteers.

The tip of a poisoned arrow is lodged
in his heart.

Burnished stars = new childhood.
Scarlet candelabras burning in elder forests.

You see no piano.
You hear no heartbeat.

We are draped in the thunder of gods.
Rusty corsets pop open like dead sonatas.

Foggy fantasies amid strangled stereo whispers.
The Devil has pushed these lips to the beginning.

Dreams lay in the corner, drugged in the wombs of spiders.
Merciless knowledge grows from seeds of passion.

A graduate of the University of Arizona, D.R. Baker has published one collection of poetry, American Supper. He is currently working on a new hagiography titled Love & Tornados and a collection of urban vignettes titled Bus Stop Tales. American Supper is for sale at Book World, Novel Ideas, and Door to Door Books. He is currently applying for admission into UW-Madison’s M.F.A. Program.