Poetry
Sepulchress
By MW Editors
Digging beneath the dirt of my body is the only
way I know to escape it: its fatal birdcage, its sung
prison of bones. And as I labor You tell me of all the women
who failed to listen, how now they are enshrouded
in salt pillars & sunken in bogs & dissolved in lime.
Unwilling I learn of the river, the tower, the millstone, the grave—
& for a thousand miles around us the tall candles
of evening are burning me to the ground.
Anchoress me away. Blame the light for peering
into my internment, for making of itself an unholy ghost.
Place my (bird)cage where it will never open. Your voice
a spear in my unsanctified heart, I go below ground.
The insects are kinder than You ever were. Cruel god,
abbess me empty. I pack dirt in my mouth so I cannot pray.
Amy DeBellis is the author of the novels All Our Tomorrows, Methuselah, and The Widening Gyre.
