Fire Gone
by PATRICK T. REARDON
In the livers of cattle,
Denmark divines the past and all its messengers.
He reads the Acts of the Martyrs
and the Lives of the Saints
and the Gospel of Nottingham South-West Palos
and the sum of all suburbs.
Then, he isn’t there
as if a fire gone out, ashes cold,
his ashes from the body burn.
Jacoba is stiff-necked and ruthless,
containing a sadness with no door she can find.
She speaks with her eyebrows, always angry.
On Rogation Day, Hambone multiplies
and goes out to beat the boundaries of the parish,
invisible lines, invisible walls up, ever up,
to heavenly cellars.
He is the crowd,
weighed down by steps and rags and backpacks.
He enters New Chicago on foot
in a Milwaukee Avenue Messenger t-shirt.
He is a gathered church,
a stained-glass window with a muddy moral,
a humble representation,
a one-page manifesto shellacked onto the lamppost,
arbitrary. He reasons fleshly reasonings.
and prays the High Court Psalm
and lights the Blood Candle.
He is a newfound lost soul never again unlost.
Lamb of God, gate of sheep.
Altar, water, wine and blood.
Patrick T. Reardon, a Chicago Tribune reporter from 1976 to 2009, is the author of seven poetry collections. His latest, Every Marred Thing: A Time in America, was the winner of the 2024 Faulkner-Wisdom Prize from the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society of New Orleans (Lavender Ink). He is a six-time nominee in poetry for a Pushcart Prize. His poetry has appeared in America, RHINO, Commonweal, Long Poem, After Hours, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal, and other journals.
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