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| gpmf.org
Incarnadine, vermillion, crimson;
that night your words were made flesh I became
a hummingbird trapped in a scarlet room,
whose wings beat so quickly they cannot be seen.
II. Midwife
She washes the hands which cradled a head,
which pulled a snipe’s shoulders, featherless
wings, roe belly smooth and scale-less,
frogs’ legs cocked to jump. She hauls these hybrid
foreigners from one world of light to another,
where they root for words;
milk, white, breast.
They have come a long way.
I am dressed
for the journey in a coat of fine lanugo [downy] hair.
She washes her hands, the basin swallows
every trace of blood and milky vernix.
This close they could be Pilate’s, Herod’s fingers,
shaking drops into a rose-water bowl.
III. Poppies
Their red is shut eyes staring at the sun.
They hypnotise—so rich, so violent!
Their translucent beauty is a feint,
lightning strikes you if you touch one.
Resurrection seeds, they double-cross the grave,
fresh among the meat, the chitterlings.
Before the dead turn cold, the quickening
has struck fields red and women heavy.
Born too soon, my loose skin was rice-paper,
veins like tattoos, bones as soft as saplings,
eyelids still sealed shut. I came out howling
in the dark, blindfolded by my maker.
IV. Living Water
It is a charmer’s gift, to quicken
water’s soul, to stroke a bowl’s bronze rim
until a clear note rises from the hum,
ripples turn to waves, to leaps, then light rain
falls from empty skies and sharpens
to a torrent, hail hops like a frog
plague in the scorched fields, and as long
as the note holds,
we dance to its resonance.
This is water’s homage to the Baptist,
who leapt in the womb when Mary called:
Her voice made me kick like a lame man healed,
made me sing like the dumb choirs at Pentecost.
