Salamandrine like lightning, the mind.
I believe there’s a heaven
in heaven, a place we can go
to remember everything.
It’s small, this second heaven, no bigger
than a teenage crush.
But the door is heavier than desire,
and to open it, an Archangel must
lower your heart from her lips
like a microphone between songs.
My friends, we have seen the swirling
nacre turn to silt above us
and twisters like ear trumpets
burrow in the deaf earth.
That is why I believe God needs a place
to prove He is everywhere
enough to give us some alone time.
Slate gray walls and narrow.
Stiff as an iron lung,
closed off from heaven proper.
You go there by yourself to smoke.
You could go there to flex
the many phantom limbs of thought
that without exercise burn
pointlessly. And when the soft knocks come
like stitches of redundant thunder
in the far distance, your time
in second heaven is up.
Jeffrey Morgan is the author of Crying Shame. His poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Pleiades, Rattle, Third Coast, Verse Daily, and West Branch. He blogs occasionally at thinnimbus.tumblr.com.Â
Image: Truly Tasteless Mandala by Daniel Nester
Pine Hills Review 