INTERCESSORY PRAYER
There was always a man
between me and the lord.
I learned to be a woman,
disbelieved but fruitful,
a body uncooperative. I learned
to hide behind a veil, to confess,
to search a child brain
for signs of weakness and evil:
a quickening of the pulse,
the red bird of thought.
I learned drunkenness on altar
wine and how to hover above
myself, separate from my body.
I learned to transubstantiate
when in the presence of man,
learned by saints that chaste dead women
are preferable
to any woman alive.
TYPO
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