by Jane Zwart
In my mother’s theory of miracles
there are two columns, one
for replicable wonders—peonies
and babies slick from the womb,
life and more life—and one
for the incalculable: in contempt
of physics, undousable fires
and nonflammable men;
in contempt of time,
souls raised from the dead.
My mom asks me what I think,
and on the window sill
a Christmas cactus that outlived
her mother is blooming
out of season—the anniversary
of my grandma’s death
now all the liturgy it knows.
I say, I’m thinking of Christmas
in both columns: the baby
slick from the womb,
the virgin in contempt
of physiology. But the truth is
I’m also working backward
from Easter to Lazarus, to life
and more life, to a man twice
as mortal for having been raised.
Which is to say I am working
back toward my mother.
What shall I call her survival?
What shall I call this twig propping
the taxonomy of miracle open
as it would the lion’s mouth?
::
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University and co-edits book review for Plume. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, and her first collection of poems is coming out with Orison Books in February 2026.
Image: Alina Sofia
ID: A yellow cactus bloom.
Psaltery & Lyre 