We Wait

We Wait

Fucking bitch gave me the evil eye,

so I burned her.

Arisen with sage or under silver hair,

like the savages buried by the fathers

          who converted us —their stoles'

beige cotton —far from lemon trees,

     from lingonberries, still farther

from our plastic canteens, granola

bars, strewn phones, outside El Paso

in a warehouse

                      filled to FULL, we wait.

His holiness idles without our walls

now, let out when our angels rang

a bell for him to capture sun and air,

before they ushered us back to these

cuffs, necklaces, their eternal shine,

"Now and at the hour of our death"

          —we wait.

Our father lectures, "Children, our

Lord's love is here with us. No one will

steal her heart away." We've covered

her with space blankets, silver as our

     angels' glasses. Our father strokes

his pectoral cross: "Children, first born

     like Iscah, there, reborn to worship

our Lord

               in the beauty of holiness."

     Too soon, too alone, have we come

to the proper hill, have we lit the fire,

     have we polished our cups, have

our angels come, have our choirs

sung, "Forgive them for they know

               not what they do."

We wait.

Like the slivers of bone and calavera

interred by the fathers who converted

us, within their mission, under His eye

     and in their hands that savaged us,

on our land where we mined the ore,

before the fire which our Lord has

given us to purify His altar, His house

          where we are forsaken,

               we wait.

     

[personae]