Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
We Want Everything of Value to Be Eternal
flesh,
in which I see your image
rest. House of ash,
who made the fire
that set you going? Chance, says a voice. Accident, not message.
What use the arguments over supper?
Nature
_
is the book of God, the deist in my head
returns, old
traitor:
thought distinct from prayer:
thought turned water and smoke where the walls may as well
have been paper:
a fine silver fire, a handful was all,
(—enough to buy a body, enough to buy a field of blood—)
has thrown
the temple down, has let the strangers descend
on what is left of its effects: what is trash:
our father made
the labyrinth behind
the church that ends in disrepair:
the narrowing circles of whitewashed stone
sink into the ground:
nature of the hour: picture
of the wound:
Gina Franco is the author of two poetry collections: The Accidental (University of Arkansas Press, 2019), winner of the CantoMundo Poetry Prize, and The Keepsake Storm (University of Arizona Press, 2004). Her writing has appeared in 32 Poems, AGNI, The Georgia Review, Narrative, Poetry, and elsewhere. She divides her time between Galesburg, Illinois, where she teaches at Knox College, and the West Texas borderlands. (updated 4/2020)