i sit quietly
watching my soul unfold.
she’s been sleeping so long;
she’ll be starving when she wakes.
i can sense it,
her approaching wakefulness
after long gestation, hibernation,
rest.
she needed it: the time
to close her eyes and ears.
no sacred scripture crossed the threshold
of her,
no sacrament touched her lips.
now these things are strange enough
to be sacred, again.
it is darker sooner
now. some days,
at least,
have blue skies
at just the ripeness
i prefer. but mostly
it’s a strange
damp
chill-and-warmth.
the earth is transitioning
and has
cold sweats.
she’s vibrant and lively and it’s sad,
now, how similar our tragedies are.
she thought they’d last and now a month later
he’s dating someone else,
but his mother says he’s confused and will
come back soon, so she’s
holding out hope.
i guess that’s inevitable at this moment, but
i wish i could shake her and say:
pick up your hope, throw it across your back,
carry it away, and set it down somewhere else.
when you’re in an ocean it’s a good thing
to let go of an anchor.
Forty-three apprehensions,
forty-four apparitions
fell upon Eden and Sodom and Cush.
Women met Satan,
neighbors knew angels,
Cain fled away from the land of his birth.
The words, they are stark upon black-and-white page;
from them rise power, shame, and disgrace.
Labor pains, sodomy, a black mark and names
saddled their bearers and held taught the reins.
White men took letters and midrashed around them;
Sending old tales and black dogs to hound them.
Those who hold pens will always be victors
over the bitches, faggots, and niggers.
God breathed line-sketches; men filled them in,
colored with blood and ashes and sin.
Weak divine scripture faltered and fell
to the preachers and bishops who rushed forth from hell.
Anxious to consolidate power and wealth
they wove webs like spiders in darkness and stealth.
Embellishing God’s truth they changed all the stories,
sexed up creation, redemption, and glory.
EDEN
the human gasped a first breath; it was
bright and all the animals were
swarming curiously. God sat off to the side,
wiping sweat off their triune brows with muddy hands.
Later God put their heads together, then put their hands on
human’s head and sent him into the first sleep.
when the human awoke, there was a hole in its chest.
no, its chest was split in two. where was the rest of it?
now the man feels inadequate, and hungry, and frustratedly sad.
over there, in the tulips. she stirs, sighs, and wakes.
in her eyes is all the surety he’s been desiring.
God walks to them, smiling. “Look, now if you are lonely,
there is someone to talk to; now, if you are drowning,
there is someone to pull you out of deep water. Just do not
go seeking too much. You have all you need. You are all
you need to be.”
Snake is jealous and cunning. Snake’s own uniqueness has gone
unacknowledged in the shining face of the woman.
Snake falls upon them one day, twining sinuously from a branch:
“Would you, would you
like to be
more than you are?
Here, children, take and eat. You will not surely die. You can
be wiser and more beautiful than you are.”
They eat and they know and they are shamed
and they have trusted someone more than God, more than themselves.
They thought God would withhold delight,
they thought something else could pull them,
gasping and terrified,
from deep primordial waters.
The story is about not sex
not submission
not silence
but delight
recognition
and the delicate nature
of relation.
In April 2009, I died and went to heaven.
They said I was burning in hell.
In December 2007, I died and went to heaven.
I thought I was burning in hell.
I remember the callouses on your fingers,
but nothing that you said,
except: “That’s bullshit, Sarah,”
when I wanted to die.
There is documentation of you.
I know we existed together,
in the same spheres,
singing like wet fingers on wineglasses.
We revolved around each other.
You were my sun; I was your moon.
I reflected you. I was young,
and in love.
I wrote you poetry.
I bought a journal.
I began, meticulously, to document the days,
to document my joys,
to document my love.
It was like tracking an addiction
or a pregnancy.
You know, don’t you, that the brain reacts to
the disintegration of two lovers
like it reacts to quitting crack cocaine
cold turkey?
Maybe you don’t; after all, I read it somewhere…
No wonder I shook in cold sweats on the bathroom floor,
screaming.
And in
walked
Rob.
I swear he suspected
what was going on at night,
when I curled into a small ball
and my mantra was: sleep, sleep, sleep
(but sleep never came).
He made me go places. Go to the mall. Eat.
Be bored with him.
He’s been watching me reconstruct myself
ever since.
When, in April 2009, I rose again,
he cheered me on. His exuberant
young bellows drowned out
the papery, the shrill,
the cruel cold judgments.
He asked me about God once;
I waxed poetic.
He asked me about God again;
I said I didn’t believe in God
that day,
but I probably would
tomorrow.
Travis, too,
burst in ferociously,
demanding what the hell
was wrong with me,
drumming on a set named
Kathleen.
I wondered why we weren’t
dancing.
Later we realized that
we were both grieving
rebounding
pretending we were normal
when we were both
damaged goods.
In April 2010,
I came clean.
Told him I’d been saved.
He laughed and said he’d just watched
Jennifer Knapp on Larry King.
His girl got married,
my boy got married;
he went to Africa,
I went to Nashville.
In Nashville,
typically enough,
guitars hang on our dining room wall.
Less typically,
prayer flags hang in our bedroom.
My Theotokos and I curl into one another,
small sighs escaping our mouths.
a blank page dares me to cry out.
(what shall i cry?)
prophesy, daughter,
of the love which you know.
oh, it burns in my belly,
but i am afraid.
one day, one day, daughter,
you will prophesy.
you will not be able to hold it in,
up it will come, like vomit, like orgasm, like birth,
like insistent blooming flowers through dirt,
like volcanic ash which devastates then enriches all the land about it.
you will cry out:
there is a love in me i cannot hold in,
there is a love i cannot be silent about,
there is a love which when i speak it
will brighten the sun and water the ground
there is a love to me which has restored this rib and i am whole,
and i am pulled out of muddy waters day after day.
God saw this love and said it was good.
The eyes of God’s children widened first in scandal
then in awe. They began to weep because they had been
stealing ribs from people, cracking the bone and pulling bodies apart,
pushing people’s heads underwater.
it is a long and lonely thing
to navigate
to chart waters
which you can describe but which
none else can truly know
i see your little boat, floating there
your voice comes thinly over the waves
which lap childishly at the wooden beams which buoy me
i have no oars; your voice
makes me clap hands furiously with the water,
entreating them to push me toward you.
i am frustrated;
the endeavor seems fruitless.
God – God! i groan.
how i want to get in your boat,
to know exactly how it feels
to be behind your eyes,
under your skin
to know you,
yada.
it is like it was
when i wanted
to do myself
in
and still,
and still,
i wish i was
brave enough to tear
my skin
it would be the coming of myself
to fullest glory, to this,
the most recognizable and truest
part of myself,
the one which for years
has desired this:
the end
when i am alone, i in yoga pants and bra
dance, stretch,
ache through each muscle as i
channel all my yearning for
concord, harmony, peace
toward the
rug
i run a hand over my own skin
send that hand shuttling forward
an emissary to better times.
Come home; I’m waiting
here.
Crack open the door while I pretend to be sleeping.
Slip out of your clothes;
slither under the sheets next to me.
Kiss me on the wing of me,
gently like you have since we were children.
Then, take your arm and
like an arcing blanket
sweep it over me,
tuck it in close at my ribs
so my heart is guarded by you.
Press close:
We are roses pressed between pages in novels or Bibles.
Your nose against my neck,
my hair pulled up against the crown of my head
so you can breathe.
((word vomit needs lots and lots of work))
