I told them On and on they hollered In prayer Their palms pressed Oil to my forehead I’ll fly away oh glory I’ll fly away in the morning. . . They faked my healing I cannot account for what evil May enter.
The minister says I’m alive Through grace says They may never know What rendered me silent He tells them to pray The spirit gives several messages In other tongues Praise the Lord They shout Praise the Lord The…
They told the judge I sat before an open fire Fell right into it But wasn’t a hair on my head singed. They recalled my vision A prophetess wearing clothes The color of rotten grasses Grounding sage to a fine powder They said I put it in their tea Told…
I saw I had to go down to the devil’s hell That was my home. I didn’t want to give up Worldly things but when the Lord got me ready I came leaping and jumping. I fell down on my knees And said “Lord if you will save me I’ll…
We try the old ways Wild geranium To stop the bleeding Devil’s clothesline For the burns and sores But our apron strings fall Loose our shoes will not stay Tied the beds rise up We wind up on the floor The clothes hung on the line Torn off till all…
I love my native lands and I love my graves. —Hanna Zavorotnya, The Babushkas of Chernobyl Babushka No. 1 When you unfurl your head scarf, I half expect dupa1-length hair; instead, you wear it thinly-cropped, the grey cut close to the flesh. I suppose it’s easier this way, to sever…
High strung They called her Unsettled We come home She’d clawed her a notch Jerked the planks right out Said the witch needed her. Ginseng they said Ease the hippo Help her sleep Start slow Build the dose None of us knew What it would take To smother her.
So all I have are snatches of a dream I can’t remember: roads drawn as if by fingers in the dust, hills with sun-stiff peaks. Escape and tell the story that you know, some ancestor must have said, but no one did. I’m still not sure if anyone remembers it;…
He is an outlier as well for all I know, another seizing an opportunity likely to be all-too-rare in weeks, as the ice lays claim to open water, swooping down from his grey and bony precipice to grasp a remnant (something left behind by his careless neighbors) and a shivering…
Michael McFee. Appointed Rounds: Essays. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2018. 224 pages. Softcover. $20.00. “Writers wield such flimsy materials for immortality—the ink that fades, the paper that yellows or crumbles or burns, the books that waste away on dusty shelves, unread,” Michael McFee writes in “Immortality,” the final essay…