Beside the old statue
freshly cracked in each eye,
I set my wine aside.
This was after
the migraines opened me,
after the secret split me,
and convinced me
to tear his face apart:
the eyes especially, the saint’s smiling eyes.
At Qumran, in the Dead Sea Valley,
I gathered secrets and fed them to fire.
My guilt grows deep
every night, guilt seeks a shadow
among the shades of locusts
hidden in the shadows of a tree
calling on me: to eat its fruit.
The fire pulsates w/ invitation.
From afar, the locusts watch.
Within what I know, I should not write this/and this
I dance in secrets,
burning voices
while I place minds on the sacrificial stone.
Farewell to an idea: my father’s faith,
my mother’s secret fills the poem.
If there is anything other than nature that is sacred, it is poetry, which I might argue is also nature, for so many reasons. The conflict and survival, the growth and death, the vicious and the tender.
This work embodies all of this and so much more.
Grateful,
Melissa Barbour