Poetry by Lily Herman

Shrine of the Little Flower

This is why we have drills.
If for some reason the occasion
came, if I was called to the foot
of the inscrutable structure
as the cloth and all the dishes
slid off, if the table’s flat face
became a clock, and in
its pressured hour I had to prove
I could write a poem without God,
there is plenty I could take out.
I put this eye to my house,
holding every object up
to the sun so that my arms
are a tender pronouncement,
like it is my beloved son
in whom I am well pleased¹,
to see if there are any
golden scraps that must
be panned to some less
hysterical hold.

Shoulder to the slab, I decide
I could remove the bit
about the bullfrog with skin
like spilled oil, if he shines
too glorylike, the way
that once I met you I knew
I could build walls around the poems
but never keep you out, and
that I wasn’t interested
in some sort of war game
with a taxonomy of loss.

We have the word now
for being on earth: so I could darken
the rest of the lamps,
crush every tabernacle
housing a single flower,
slice the grief-thread we all tug
from our gentle bellies,
like a child coaxing its mother
into a state of cooing love,
until one end of rope
lassos the moon
and lowers its spilling
light into two bowls:
the cream

and the gasoline below,
a yellow dream
beneath wine clouds,
we could lie on our backs
wondering if it’s being lovely
or being loved that tells us
whose hands have been here.

Lily Herman