Deon Robinson

Let us create a word then, for when 

we catch a god down by the river and rather 

than introduce them to the knife—

to its riveted and precise wound-making— 

we indulge in something the world can’t teach us, lick it 

in the endless ribbons of light that color us 

dark, and say don’t worry, this is a lullaby, 

a gold tooth snuggled under the pillow, a currency 

so dreamlike it almost doesn’t belong to a country 

at all, and isn’t this a species of witness 

resurrected from extinction, a heart that pumps 

on the good clean water alone.