CHURCH
http://www.maverickmagazine.com/articles/168/1/CHURCH/Page1.html
Eva Skrande
Eva Skrande was born in Havana, Cuba and grew up in Miami. She earned a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.F.A. from Iowa, and is currently finishing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at the University of Houston. Her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, American Voice, Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and the Alaska Quarterly, among others. Her chapbook, the Gates of the Somnambulist was published by Jeanne Duval EditionsBy Eva Skrande
Published on 05/3/2002
Within your arches, I am moon and corn.
Church where winter crows, church of souls
that wear shoes, church of birds playing hopscotch.
My tribes and your thighs' rivers are one.
O altar of horses and sweat,
O hymns where corn marries braille.
Look at the flowers dangling their knees from the pews
of your shoulders, the hundred brides
that sprout from your wine's gauntlet.
A thousand solitudes light on your brow's nave
where they kneel like lost soldiers
and ask to forget the mothers whose haycarts bled,
and ask for brides to kiss their burdens,
and ask, and are granted, shoes
that have known neither hunger nor death.
Copyright © Eva Skrande, 2002. All Rights Reserved.
Within your arches, I am moon and corn.
Church where winter crows, church of souls
that wear shoes, church of birds playing hopscotch.
My tribes and your thighs' rivers are one.
O altar of horses and sweat,
Church where winter crows, church of souls
that wear shoes, church of birds playing hopscotch.
My tribes and your thighs' rivers are one.
O altar of horses and sweat,
Within your arches, I am moon and corn.
Church where winter crows, church of souls
that wear shoes, church of birds playing hopscotch.
My tribes and your thighs' rivers are one.
O altar of horses and sweat,
O hymns where corn marries braille.
Look at the flowers dangling their knees from the pews
of your shoulders, the hundred brides
that sprout from your wine's gauntlet.
A thousand solitudes light on your brow's nave
where they kneel like lost soldiers
and ask to forget the mothers whose haycarts bled,
and ask for brides to kiss their burdens,
and ask, and are granted, shoes
that have known neither hunger nor death.
Copyright © Eva Skrande, 2002. All Rights Reserved.