Two poems by J.David

the cemetery that was ash

It was the last day of summer  /  when the church cemetery
became ashes  /  as it burned  /  schools of people gathered

old men and women  /  curious mothers and children
that night  /  the pastor  /  locked himself in the study

and wept  /  so loudly  /  the walls began to peel
like love-me-not petals  /  or burning flesh

two men from the newspaper  /  came the next day
wearing big straw hats  /  and knocked at the door

the pastor  /  refused to open  /  stood at the door
palms sweating  /  teeth chattering the way

shingles  /  shake  /  in a storm—
trembling

he whispered
“do you think the dead judge us?”

he went  /  later  /  among the charred headstones
and began to dig

when the town arrived for Sunday Mass  /  they found him
clothes torn  /  covered in ashes  /  abandoned in a grave

of his own making  /  clutched in his palm  /  a note saying only
“they’re gone  /  all of them  /  to nowhere at all.”

Leaving through the back door

I tell my mother I am going to die soon
& she becomes
a field of poppies
a garden of tulips
a pearl
tucked beneath the tongue
of an oyster

*

it’s not that I’m afraid to be a late
bloomer mama
I’m afraid I won’t bloom at all

*

I named you myself—
child of calamity
halfway between a boy
& a bruise
rattle in the wind-song
opals nested in elbows
almost wings

*

I am aching mama
I say “this is my body”
and it sounds like a broken promise

*

When I fell into this well there were already bones
buried under bones
I built this ladder of them
filled my pockets with them
ate them until I was full

*

it was the poems that saved me
mama
I swear it

*