bad prayer

Brandon O’Brien


may I have you die twice
for me? once for sinfulness,
twice for sinfulness’s sake,
in the early morning as
dew trains down the kitchen
window. your wings our own
sheets, curtains drawn about
the climax, what would the
heavenly host say of this party?
your wheel a heart-cage
warm and thrumming, eyes most
deft at seeing something worth loving,
save for you. kneeling before divinity's
concierge is blasphemy, and damn,
blaspheming sweet too bad, baby bird.
for love’s sake, as true as God—which I don't rebuke.


Brandon O'Brien is a performance poet and writer from Trinidad and Tobago whose work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, Arsenika, Reckoning, and other outlets. He is also the Poetry editor of FIYAH: A Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction.