After Donne
exeunt my heart, evangelical god, for you
are still frosted and feathered somewhere
in the eighties, still fed with the fates of fetuses,
“fairies,” and the virginities of fatherless girls.
you inhabited the privilege of emily’s metal-mouthed
jokes about my sister’s teeth, crowded from rickets.
your joy was our makeshift sleeping bags:
pilled quilts at the lock-in. your sacrificial altar
the long-nosed ladies enduring the singe
of blue magic in our hair. what do you call
a burning bush that isn’t consumed
no matter how you flour its mouth with proper vowels?
you were the nine-tails lashing in the deacon’s lustful eye
hoping to strip us of every one of our hemmed
garments as we played gap-legged in the sanctuary.
your wrath was the community outreach sweeping past
the trailer park to brimstone the projects up the street.
i have put away the childish guilt
of never becoming a daughter with your issue of blood,
Light Bearer, casting shadows with your bleached-out Word.
touch me not; i go to a different Father, though
you’ll damn me anyway. that isn’t new.
each time i pass the sentinels at your tomb
they try to convince me you could set me free,
so long as you can fondle me with a separate
but equal hand—or at least that’s what
they’d have me believe.
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