Invisible Knights
Fire and robes stir the white road,
a white corona of caliche around each torch.
Come inside a mother shouts.
She only has to say it once.
Her son turns out the lights very fast,
latches the break-away screen door.
It's like the night of a tornado,
that same dread.
They feel their way to her room
and crawl under the bed.
The telephone is ringing.
She recites a prayer printed opposite
a photograph she carries of the Pope
offering an infant benediction.
Layers of down muffle the approach
of a confederate anthem. Our Lady
of Fatima smiles down on the bedstead
from her gilded frame. Heartbeat fills
the woman’s head when footsteps
thud on the porch. Her boy studies
and plucks the bed springs.
Something strikes the house.
She imagines the parade of eyes,
pillowcases hiding expressions elated
or troglodyte, smearing her garage
with threats and papist, protocols
for tonight's tree lighting.
Tomorrow will seem like nothing happened.
She will walk her son to town for a movie,
climbing the hillside littered with handbills
and bottles around a patch of charred grass.
The theater box office will smell of smoke
and the ticket seller will make change
without touching her hand.
Borderlands #21, Fall / Winter 2003
Fire and robes stir the white road,
a white corona of caliche around each torch.
Come inside a mother shouts.
She only has to say it once.
Her son turns out the lights very fast,
latches the break-away screen door.
It's like the night of a tornado,
that same dread.
They feel their way to her room
and crawl under the bed.
The telephone is ringing.
She recites a prayer printed opposite
a photograph she carries of the Pope
offering an infant benediction.
Layers of down muffle the approach
of a confederate anthem. Our Lady
of Fatima smiles down on the bedstead
from her gilded frame. Heartbeat fills
the woman’s head when footsteps
thud on the porch. Her boy studies
and plucks the bed springs.
Something strikes the house.
She imagines the parade of eyes,
pillowcases hiding expressions elated
or troglodyte, smearing her garage
with threats and papist, protocols
for tonight's tree lighting.
Tomorrow will seem like nothing happened.
She will walk her son to town for a movie,
climbing the hillside littered with handbills
and bottles around a patch of charred grass.
The theater box office will smell of smoke
and the ticket seller will make change
without touching her hand.
Borderlands #21, Fall / Winter 2003