Elsewhere a bell rings
medieval in its calling and here
I fumble for a reliquary,
any bit of cloth or bone
my religion left me
naked on a marble slab
what else is faith? The inner eye
takes the initiative like Medea
spent centuries believing pregnancy
would save us, programmed ambition
through seasonal depression,
social media and NPR,
the elsewhere bell clangs the myth
as pure and ruinous as an all-boys choir,
angelic sons already smoking
with the violence we burn.
My son is my greatest pagan idol
I even love his shit, my feminism
a split tongue wanting
what others have, unrepentant
for each of the thousand pregnancies
I bet on the prophecy of a son
that will one day destroy us
and my witch hysteria begs
to whom Dear Body
shall I give you?
My love language lies somewhere
between the book of shadows and pizza
delivered still hot: my husband
built the back deck himself
my son drew me a mother’s day card
strewn with both hearts and ghosts
and whether or not such happiness
is an illusion the elsewhere bell
rings like a scapegoat
for the grandmothers who
spilled blood in the kitchen
but kept the floors so clean
you could eat off them
this is our inheritance, the sainthood
we hungered, the hexes we cast
to hold any space in line
for the next woman rushing to make it
home in time for dinner.
