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First Prayer
(for Julian Roy Barivan)
by David Sullivan

May your tiny hands
    follow your wide head into
        the lap of the world

Like a river loosed—
    the fluids that once swaddled
        you in translations

May your eyes touch flesh
    first, before they know cloth, cut
        glass, heartache, desire

Trace the belly’s vine—
    the Linae Negra—come
        feast on earth’s Eden

May sweet smelling milk
    draw your head up to your first—
        to your second breast

May your double-bowed
    mouth fasten itself around
        syllables of suck

The song of your lungs
    we’ll wear like a bell; changing
        timbre through time

Tuned to our voices,
    turn towards the sound of your name,
        proffer your body

Forgive us kissing
    you so extravagantly,
        we’ve been hungering












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