Mark Alan Williams

LITURGY

Sunday mornings
I push myself upright
to watch as
she dresses,
observing the broad
plane of jaw to cheekbone,
her throatÕs edge
stretched forward.
Her body
lined with shadows
straightens:
denim brushes up
knees, thighs. These
are the Sunday rituals
of folding and putting away.
Quiet sacrament of the
some other time;
pipe organ hymn
to cigarettes
tapped back in packages;
resurrection of buttons--
lip gloss--keys.

Mark Alan Williams is a PhD fellow at the University of Louisville, where he studies Rhetoric and Composition. His poems have recently been published in the Tulane Review and Honeyland Review