the blueshift journal

we disappear      in the month

of burning cinnamon and shaking sky

 

it is the night the sheep are slaughtered

the holy man’s mouth      swells hallowed

 

with prayer like the lowlight      of yesterday’s smoke

when he slides      the blade through neck of wool

 

i am girl      wiping ash from my arms

with spit      but still womaned by the sight

 

of sky bleeding into stomach      intestines the color

of telephone lines dripping outside in the heat

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i look for you in the crowd      a clot of coriander

women in the courtyard      men loose boned and ungodly

 

only to find you dim and dust with afternoon shade      mute

as if you were not the song i once heard in the womb

 

for you i am trying to remember      the prayer for rain

and all that leaves my mouth      is a sound too close to thunder

 

that is when it starts      the skin peeling from our backs

on the day of sacrifice we are the left rib of our mothers

 

by the first light of day      faint blurs of yellow and cotton

that night      we wash clothes in the buckets we once collected

 

blood      mouth taut like a mango tree before shrinking

back into the ground      my mother and her mother too 

 

were drained like sheep      made full again by duty      shame 

the hand of the almighty at their neck      becoming the hand