Daily Bread
Inside the ache. Doused in the heat. The plastic Virgin won’t
address me, her eyes cast down.
I hear her sighs. I hear all the mother gods and idols sigh.
The Gaia, Ishtar, Ix-chel, Chang’E on high
draped in her nightgown.
Gravity pulls the blood from my body, the unborn
sinking fog, wending rivers, rustling greens;
so even the mountain will not last forever, fated to be swallowed
and drawn low. What to do
with all these elementals and goddesses then?
Every morning, I drink from a manufactured chalice,
sip the Earl Grey, the black Darjeeling, the Pekoe.
I navigate around the islands in my apartment, read the books
that imperfect but eager people sent into the future,
run my fingers over an unclean counter,
grasp a doorknob,
breathe. So where are
the holies and their likenesses,
where be their words in my daily doings?
Books of the dead, Abrahamic verses, the written words of pilgrims
pressed between bindings, grimoires, old folk songs
that refuse to dim;
how could I have ever hoped
to catch the new sermons spoken?
Merely, I envision their pillars, breasts of nectar, blue
shoals, eyes like dead fish, smiles from cut stone, hands wringing
out tree limbs, choking them barren, burnt colors
scarring my human skin; I guess somewhere,
in these lines, I might’ve unconsciously uttered
prayers.
First published in Amethyst Review November 2018.
Renwick Berchild 