Thy Kingdom Come/ Thy Will be Done
Hallowed be the name
of thy children bagged
& buried beneath snow the woman strangled
in her bed the child raped in a middle school
bathroom how can you bear what you’ve seen
here o ugly snow of my childhood
tell me where my faith is buried when you go
love governed by seasons
I am a season betrayed
by sun-slits in the pavement
the sidewalks broken by the live oaks’ lost roots
growing toward the sky perhaps like people
trees want more of the world
than what they are born to
if there is a heaven show me
how we’ll be restored promises
like peonies growing over gravestones in a cemetery
I wander wanting
a name for my baby that has already been claimed
surely curses are more than myth o lord
bless the child I carry bless the widowed
wind bless the cherry blossoms so briefly
in-bloom bless what you’ve given us
bless what you take & take &
Uninhabitable Sphere
In the hours a child bends
into a labyrinth, who sees the hours
building in me this absence?
I asked for a city
to rebuke the river
I am. I asked for more sea
-sons. The country of my mother
that I gave up years ago. A woman
I wove from sand
& syllables. The phrases
thrown away when her body
failed us. I follow
the hollows in the orphaned
earth, but I refuse
the fence, the dam,
the log-laced river bottom.
The departed, like velvet
-cloaked bells. Each ovary,
a diamondfull satchel.
Where are the minutes I will disappear in?
I thought a child would make me
immortal. But only the hours bear
a child. Slick. Indistinct.
Reeking of fertilizer & coffee grounds.
Sometimes, I want to go. The child will not grow
closer. I will not be distracted.
What fanfare is there in being
brave? I reach into the ground & feel
hundreds of years. Waiting mouths.
The hours that I won’t be known.
A heaven that exists to empty
a mother of ghosts.
Of all of this possiblity.
