A GOLDEN CROSS CAME OUT OF HIS MOUTH by Wren Hanks

hush: a journal of noise

A Golden Cross Came Out of His Mouth

by Wren Hanks

and swallowed the room. The Light decked my eyes and the spit poured from his mouth like a salt keg.

Cross to talon across hallways, slide under doors. Cross to wound in my amber nights (every night).

Cross I pray to, choking my dove after dinner. Cross I stalk, flush from hiding, burning tablecloths.

A golden cross came out of his mouth and swallowed him. Saw his eclipse, his attentive blood. Oh we bow not for the symbol, but the thing itself.

A cross boiled to nightshades, turned on itself like a mirror.

Wren Hanks

Wren Hanks is the author of The Rise of Genderqueer, a 2018 selection for Brain Mill Press’s Mineral Point Poetry Series. A 2016 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Fellow, his poetry has been a finalist for Indiana Review’s 1/2 K Prize and anthologized in Best New Poets. His recent work appears or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Waxwing, Third Coast, New South, and elsewhere. He is also the author of Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press), an Elgin Award finalist. His new manuscript, Lily-livered, was a finalist for DIAGRAM’s 2020 Chapbook Contest. He lives in Brooklyn, where he is a supervisor for ACC’s New Hope program, a proactive community initiative that finds homes for “problem pets” and wildlife.