Odilon Redon

The Closing Psalms of Guinivere

Numbers 3:4

Before lying in this collapsed cathedral
of ritual, I realized we now share the same
clouds, after years with oceans between.
And those convenient numbers which so shaped
our lives, I have hidden them inside pulpits,
and with them, spiked the wine. But they're still here,
waiting for chance or god to reclaim them,
in all their coincidence and glory.

Melancholy 7:11

If I were a caged thing, so taunted by sky
that I was painted in salinity, exanimate
in my desperation, I would disguise myself
much as I am now, in these crass garbs, raiment
of religious design. I wouldn't cry like a woman,
but weep hymns of resurrection, restitution, revival.
All the time denying I knew him or where his hands had been.
Sacrifice 18:29

Hush, deafening deity; you are only a girl,
calmly slipping through deception's fine ice,
and I, in all my makeshift anglicism,
destroy the illumination of your rise, calling you
an idol, a carved creation of mockery.
No, you are a man, sitting on the bay of mattress,
waiting for her sloped lashes to shake alive,
to capture your heroic hands, and they press
into the firm fruit of her breasts.

Prayer 47:76

This world is little more than marble, December
glass. Your diseased divinity, your imperfect dimples
of wisdom still do not destroy this man whose numbers
I cannot lose. He who would place me, naked
atop the cool frame of his desire, pushing my bangs
smoothly behind the conch shell of my ear,
calling me his daughter's name.

Erin Elizabeth


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