Jacob Johanson		mecca the sixth shot is liquid epiphany. contains the realization of what eccentric priests are thinking, when they undergo mortification to understand vision- this is why we drink and any quest to determine how much these bodies can take can then accordingly be counted as holy pilgrimages to the hallowed brain-stem impulse where we find creation. half-moon sun i. i remember. how the sun was out. when we put you in the ground. how your mother. in tears. said "it isn't your fault." embraced me warmly. ii. it was a good deal. don't remember anymore exactly what i paid but i remember thinking this is a damn good price. iii. at the wake afterwards your father wept. i thought of your scars, half-moons on shoulders from daddy's fingernails. it's only now years later i know why he cried. iv. cheap motel purse strap tourniquet your arm white a branch cleared of bark exposed. v. i thought. i thought it would help. to forget. vi. i don't remember anymore how much i paid just that the sun was shining and that i had no damn right to warmth     explaining the absence of long sleeves it doesn't mean anything, my thinking of negligees you might wear. and besides you're at least partially to blame with that picture where you have a flower obscuring your eye, leading me to thoughts of photosynthesis. you know. how plants lean in towards the sun? what frustration, i thought, that flower must feel so close to brushing petals across your eyelashes which in turn led me to the horizon of your neck through some convoluted metaphor that i can't quite remember because i moved right on to the earth's rotation creating the wind that touches my face which in my imagination took me to your lungs and then the rise and fall of breasts. being a gentleman (of sorts) i simply covered them. so you see, it doesn't mean a damn thing (darling). (because it is summer; obviously a sweater would have been inappropriate) for the record though, i imagined a deep green. or light blue. perhaps black.     a settling of churchbells  i. a settling of churchbells into asphalt, sundays captured in quiet streets between the wail of sirens passing judgment on coldwater apartments where all they can afford is faith. or at least forgiveness. ii. a settling of churchbells into bones; your skeleton contains the same marrow it did at eight years old and god's shadow loomed larger. remembers the same guilt leftover from sunday schools and the idea of sin which you reject with every passing beauty, the pit of your stomach reminding with every inexcusable exit. iii. the settling of churchbells into graveyards where all logic aside everyone ascends goes to better places, impropriety fossilized despite violent endings drug abuses and enough fucking to make lord byron blush. so our mothers pray.