Justin Lacour


I’m walking on my hands and knees,

carrying you on my back

through unbelieving streets

through fields of wild grass and thistles

to the little altars made of stone.

The earth is becoming cold,

shade grows into night.

You’re wrapped in only a bedsheet,

but it’s enough somehow enough.

The birds go silent 

when you talk about ashes, and

I press my face to the dirt

until I believe in a new earth,

until I love even

the scar above your right eyebrow,

the way God combs what’s left of your hair.

Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry. He is the author of five chapbooks of poems, including Hulk Church (Belle Point Press 2023).