by Tammy Greenwood
I don’t want to tell my mother about Gilgamesh, have her question her religion.
That Utnapishtim was the first Noah, rescued all creatures without her religion.
That the Greeks and Romans had centuries of virgin births, sent Romulus
and Remus down river in a basket like Moses, long before her religion.
I won’t tell the golden gods about my mother. How she knows none of their names.
How she pours her faith on flames of worry. Extinguishes any doubt of her religion.
How I envy the blissness of her blind faith. How I forage for it in forests,
like a scavenger of mushrooms, search for hidden meanings in her religion.
No, I won’t tell my mother about Gilgamesh, how she’s so much like him,
would travel to the underworld in search for immortality, vowed by her religion.
Or how much I need her to guard her stories, continue to try to save me. Hear
my name in her prayers, her faith like an umbilical cord, sustaining her religion.
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Poet and Printmaker, Tammy Greenwood is a Louisiana native residing in California. Her work is heavily influenced by the varying landscape and culture of both states she calls home. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and her work appears in Rattle, Pinch, Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Door is a Jar, ONE ART, Rust & Moth, Orange Blossom Review, San Pedro River Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Emerge Literary Journal, FERAL, and elsewhere.
Image: Jazmin Quaynor
ID: open book viewed from the bottom.
Psaltery & Lyre 