Self-Portrait as Shinji Ikari


All my mothers frozen in a lake. All that the body knows: blue
summers and steel. I steal myself away into the corpse of a terrible
man. A stranger who circles the cathedral, posing as a good and
pleasing animal. Some proof of the sky, please. Washed and hung
somewhere I can find with my fingers still curled. Religion in a plum-
eaten sun. Girl in a sunless city. Her eyes have gone glassy with the
promise of angels. I clone copies of her, stacked to the ceiling. More
or less, I want to be loved,
I say. I behead every body made of metal. I,
myself, unmothered.