"God Trace" Poetry by Flower Conroy
"God Trace" Poetry by Flower Conroy
GOD TRACE
“ I will make something of you both pigment/ and insecticide. Something natural, even red…” —Brenda Shaughnessy’s Still Life, with Gloxinia
Eve pressed her gun
to your shoulder. A white whiskered dragon
clawed up from her thin jeans, sank
its milky talons into her ribcage
while her machine stirred
below your surface.
Its hum conjured: a crushed hive
or a boot’s breaking of a book’s binding.
You struck a match, lit a Lucky Strike, inhaled smoke
as if breathing in the dust of an angel then offered
it to her. She took it between her patent leather lips
& continued stitching flesh tapestry with fluid thread.
Buds of dew blossomed, blood pooled
from the emerging tattoo. With a rag she smeared red
across your arched back’s sun starved skin.
With her mouth she smeared red
across your famished mouth.
I could no longer watch through the basement
window. I relinquished—your image embedded
in my mind, a stain. I crossed
the streets, sought the sanctuary of my car.
Eve’s branding of your back; Eve crying out; Eve
forwards & backwards; Eve’s dragon dancing.
The car engine vibrated against the cold.
Chattering breath, exhale of ghost.
I drove without destination; passed a bill-
board that promised: Jesus Saves. I marveled
how the difference between a cross & a
crucifix was a man; how the difference
between sacrifice & sacrilege
could be dissolved into suffixation: & ultimately,
how one difference may make all the
difference. Like if it were one degree colder
there’d be the possibility tonight
for indifferent snow.
Flower Conroy’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals including Serving House Journal, BlazeVox, Saw Palm, American Literary Review, Psychic Meatloaf, Cliterature, and others. She is currently an MFA student at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her collection of poetry, “Escape to Nowhere” is forthcoming from Rain Mountain Press.
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