My Christian name you ask? It is Joseph Ignace.
I fell from my mother’s womb while she walked,
a nightly stroll around the neighborhood
in the city of nights and splendid catacombs.
She dropped into a fit of hysterics and labor
and bore me into the sewer among the fallen leaves
rainwater, urine and sweetmold, at the sound
of a man’s scream-baby Asreal delivered
in cobblestone and steam. The town’s priest
drunk on spirits blessed the child and took him
under his fourteen feathered wing. Boy of the altar
the cherubs sang, who would wear the absent square
in his collar like a lost ring on a missing finger.