bad men who love jesus
by matt robinson

                          Montreal haunts us the way livers
                          do drunks.

                          - from "Strikes Often" by Dave Margoshes

           yes, boys, we loved him that week; loved - but not
in the standard-issue sort of ways. we had

no beads, not much room in the rental car for icons; zero
deductable, in fact. there was no snow that march - that was a blessing:

the start of it. and so, in montreal, the royal seat in a province of saints, we scoundrels lived apostal for week; knew

that some power, aside from the beer and smoked meat,
was with us - that something or someone was there. we raised a glass.

but love, you say? well: we were grateful, for sure; and you
could, if you wished, call it love. because he did something - was

busy with the cops - so that they left me alone and staggered, free to piss my way along st. catherine to rue

rene levesque; to spew and sputter my acid, to rain coarse upon the city, its millions none the wiser. loved? because

miracles of every sort need explanation or attribution, and because he found, as well - apparently - a spot in the meaty heart

of that one doorman: onto whose chest my finger slurred
staccato as if his nipple were the gilt-rimmed button

of the old drinking hotel's sole working lift. because it was jesus, i'm sure, who stopped him short. yes, boys: we loved

him (or should have), because that week we were
bad men, and it's in a bad man's nature to love that beard, the gaunt

hollows of his face that we've been fed: what it is
they never truly give away, what it is they might (to some) suggest.