Poems from Child

[hommefatale]

I took these from a collection of eleven poems, entitled Child--they were part of my final project for a religious poetry class, called Illuminations (Fall 2010). All of the poems have a thread of religion in them, though try to encompass the range of my personal experiences and knowledge.

Sight

When I keep my skin free in a snow storm
I start to feel the shape of my face, right before it goes numb.
This is where my cheek ends. This is where my lips chap.
This is how perfectly spherical my eyes are.

I can roll them around in my head to warm them up
And I swallow my breath inside me.
It’s better than sleep. It’s better than waking up.
I don’t think to worry about being blind.

Do you see nothing? I think I see something
Right at the back of my head, where my skull is weakest.
The snow makes it look red. The sun makes it look purple.
Can you explain what you might not be seeing?

The mother of a mother
(After Rainer Maria Rikle’s “Sometimes a man”)

The mother of a mother doles out demands
Like candy, to her children,
Because she thinks she can save them from themselves.

And her children walk away from her as if she were nothing.

And the children of her children, who live in houses far separated from each other,
Find there, inside the people they are trying to be,
A treasure map that they never knew existed
With a big red X on Grandma’s grave.

Priest

He is an underpaid architect with geisha red lips
And cheeks kept pale with paint.
His mask glitters with beads and sequins
And the sweat of his own hard work.
This evening he is scheduled to give a sermon
To a flock who has never been to church.
They have never seen the way a nun’s white wimple
Sparkles above her warm black robes.
They only hear a throbbing, desperate baseline
And not the tight voice of a child singing His praises.
He has looked out at the herd of faces before
And never saw more than a shadow through the light.
When he grips his shining steel podium
It ignites in the red neon like a flaming sword.
When he flicks the wig’s curls out of his open mouth
His spit and sweat baptizes the front row.
No one has ever heard his words through the music
But he no longer expects them to listen.
He kicks over a glass, slick with condensation,
Spilling Blood Red Mary on his brother’s shirt.
The man yells up at him, challenging him;
The priest closes his eyes and his knees and turns.
His corset creaks like a galleon at sea
But his hand is steady and resolute.
A stagehand tells him what he already knows
“You’re on in five” and “we need you.”
Of course you do, he thinks, lacing his boots to his thighs.
You don’t have anyone else.

Fear of Hephaestion

When I love you, I want to stop.
I want to rip my sheets in half and eat the threads.
When I see a note on fire, I know the words are gone and the paper lost, forever.
How can I be sure that, in the moment running toward us,
You won’t run away with part of me?
How can I ever begin a kiss when I know someday you will need to eat?
A conquered woman bows to you, mistaking you
For the part of me you ingested and smeared in your eyes.
I am afraid to tell her of her mistake
Because I see myself as she sees me: one half.
I left my house an independent, took two steps and collapsed.
I am less than what I was because without you I am nothing.
I want to tear my heart from yours and shout, “This is mine!”
But to warm my hands, I feel your skin and not your blood.
I hate being Us when I was once simply Me.