When the thunder / cracked above / and God poured water / upon the earth
It’s the young French father’s longer arms / that first reach their daughter’s hair / in which her clasp is tangled.
I watch the moon lean against the branches empty / trees wrap its curves to the scent of spring its green / rhetoric
I will hear your words, O Lord, / I will sing and selah with my mouth; / I will teach, I will study, I will serve with my hands, / But in my heart, O Lord, / I will hesitate.
yellow. i don’t know why i need to tell you that / but i do. it was yellow and it was the color / of understanding my mortality.
My world cracked open in fourth grade when we learned our planets. In college, when my chemistry professor said, “Sometimes I wish I had studied astronomy instead of chemistry,” my universe expanded again. Moments like these are precious. The poems in Mary Peelen’s Quantum Heresies offer a similar shattering-of-the known-world effect.
I’d rather be a Corn Goddess on a Pueblo church’s walls, / sly insertion into a conqueror’s faith
