When She Asks for Something Bigger than Herself.
Start with the chasms of your knuckles
the roaming glaciers floating behind your eyes.
There is a summit in your knee, an ocean
in your breath. You can stay right here.
Then climb the spire of the grass’s tender blade,
rappel the cathedral of the coffee cup,
the one with the broken lip, from Mother’s Day.
Or. You can pilgrim to the buttered toast,
mecca the first two notes of the sparrow’s
morning song. There is a galaxy
in your cereal milk, a temple in your commute.
Shrink yourself — not in meaning — just in form.
Then you can nirvana the slipped stitch,
enlighten the awkward pause. Mystic the dishes
into place, pray to the laundry galaxies.
May there be peace on the cracked and weedy sidewalk,
goodwill to the dog’s wet nose. The owlets
stared from a low branch in the park. We never
saw them again. We genuflect the tree.
The God of Small Words
Always start with with.
And enough. For,
beside, in and through.
Sit with like and as.
Then begin, and yet.
Do not leave behind
of, between, and if.
And and. And and. And and.
At the World’s Edge
Start with what is true. The tooth still
hurts. The ice is cold. Narcissus will
win. We are losing the moon. Like the dung
beetle, we use the stars to carry our shit
home. The daughter will return. After
we are gone, the seeds will riot through
the landfill. The trees send each other warnings
through webs of latticed fungi buried in the soil.
All these wasted breaths will help them grow.
The lord god bird may not be gone,
nor the terror skink. The bread is broken,
the blood is poured. The one you kick hard
in your sleep will lean in, shush and soothe,
until the monsters quiet in your head.
The Mothers of God
You have to let it break your heart.
The sparrow hawk intercedes
the chick’s first flight.
A caravel in the sky, she
is just doing her work, all
that she was made to do.
God does not know how
to be absent, not even in the vague
wild hawks of our minds.
You don’t know how you got to work,
the same black coffee cold
in your cup, the same brown bird
at the feeder each monotonous day.
You wash your face and floss, restart
the linens ‘round for another cycle.
Sometimes, the food just spoils.
Even the worry is a sacrament.
You have to knead the clabber milk
straight into the dough. The sparrow
kneels to her harsh blank nest,
her heart in doldrum talons.
You have to slough it off like skin,
your heart, pieces of you scattered
everywhere, everywhere.
Jennifer Frayer-Griggs is a graduate of McNeese State University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program, where she had the honor of working with Iowa Poetry Prize winner, John Wood, and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Morri Creech. In addition to writing poetry and nonfiction essays, she is a progressive pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She enjoys experiencing the incarnation of nature with her husband, Dan, and two sons, Jonah and Levi, in Pittsburgh, PA.
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