priestless

long long legs
made for

running and jumping
and opening

wide wider widest
to take

the sacrament of
man the

flowering rod that
slays the

voice of war
and the

damnable caul of
singularity separating

the wall of
flesh from

every other thing
living or

not the friction
that proves

i'm not granite
but a

breakable innocent
with a

bright red river
flowing in

thin-walled veins
fixed in

an invisible pattern
of longing

i vaguely remember
it's been

too long since
i've been

chiseled open to
the glorious

thief of thought
that kills

everything but the
moment shattering

the ragged edge
of reality

into shards of
meaningless elementals

and though i
lie naked 

in anticipation on
the altar 

of desire there
is no 

priest there is
no priest

RC deWinter’s poetry is anthologized, notably in Uno: A Poetry Anthology (Verian Thomas, 2002), New York City Haiku (NY Times, 2017), Cowboys & Cocktails (Brick Street Poetry, April 2019), Nature In The Now (Tiny Seed Press, August 2019), in print in 2River, Adelaide Magazine, borrowed solace, Genre Urban Arts, Gravitas, In Parentheses, Night Picnic Journal, Prairie Schooner, Reality Break Press, Southword, and Variant Literature among many others and appears in numerous online literary journals.