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
*
William Patterson says
Especially enjoyed “the cemetery that was ash”. I see a different image each time I read it.
Fred LaMotte says
Leaving through the back door is a poem I will return to again and again. Thank you!
Sam Silva says
I like these very much. Every word matters!