Free Sophia by Michael Bible

party laughing on a double-decker bus. Love.
    St. Charles dies in the dunes of Arabia holding the hand of a lost rabbi. They pray together to the same God in different ways. They feel the pull of the long-dead kings of the world, their slaves and wives and plagues and firstborns murdered in the streets. Eli, we could eke out some romantic vision of the South, go back to the old time religion of Mississippi. Stay closer to the cave than the drawing room. Destroy the poets with their hearts on their sleeves.
    Cataract reads Penthouse in braille. He writes songs about the rapture on his yellow guitar. Nono jogs in her velvet black tracksuit and brews kombucha tea. The living long to live more life. Cataract gives a quarter to a one-legged trombone player in Washington Square then takes ten bucks from his cup. My visions are escalating. The tiger and lamb make love. The snake and Eve commiserate. Adam takes another bite.
    St. Sylvia clowns on the streets of Budapest for her supper when the prince finds her and makes her queen. From the seat of power she protects the Christians from being thrown over bridges. She walks the promenade with orchids in her hair. Her throat is slit by the descendants of Spanish Moors in the afternoon so everyone can see.
    The man with horns in the West Indian parade has a message for you, says Darling.
    What did he say, I ask.
    He says you will only know yourself when you see your face.
    What?
    Physicists explode the world to bits to see what we’re made of. The signs of everlasting life are all around us but I don’t have the right eyes. Gods are dreaming up new stuff to baffle everyone and the snakes in the grasses smell with their tongues. I am stretching myself toward the streetlamps that fill the empty heavens. The news isn’t even news anymore. People work and work and work for tiny numbers in the clouds. The ditch digging will never end and the thin, sad girls of the East Village all live in Brooklyn now. Eli, there is nowhere to preach the gospel, no gospel left to preach. No sun I can see. Nowhere left to lose my mind in peace.
    I wish people still smoked cigarettes, you say, Eli.
    They do.
    Yeah. But not like they used to.
    Below the sports bar is a grave where the dead Indians slumber. Darling and I fight all morning. She is suicidal and so am I. Then we make up with kisses and cups of black coffee and the stars of the night fading into day.
    I want to marry you in a French country church with the baker as the witness, I say.
    I want to marry you in the wheat field where van Gogh killed himself, she says.
    Cataract is fishing in the Hudson River. He smiles at the bankers and fools, his dark eyes seeing everything but the physical world. He knows every dream we have and every fear and every highway happiness. Nono cleans the fish and they feast. They seek the carnivals and fairs and go antiquing in the good part of Bushwick. Darling’s father’s father was a great crooner of love songs and her mother’s father owned a condom company. She darns my socks and makes my breakfast. Eli, we are men by desperate means. I rub my wings and pepper the night with prayers to my lovers and friends. I go to the chapel and weep for better ways to make my bed.
    Thinking now, Eli, of all the people I have known who I don’t know anymore.
    I’m making a Dr. Pepper and whiskey, you say.
    Make me one, too.
    Perhaps we should situate ourselves in the long expanding mendacity of time. The space between the spaces between the spaces. Eli, might we come to some battle with Cataract? A final end of endings? Much of my day is spent findingsomething to do with my day. I’m tired. I came here for adventure and ended up with the same old restlessness and desire. I fold up my wings and walk uptown. The saints are born and live and die forever. Sick and blue, I head for the great cock of the city to fly.
    You don’t have to go, says Darling.
    You know I do.
    Go then, she says. But think of me when you fall.
    I’ll