Remind me of the covenant
You wrote.
God, must’ve been years ago when I,
God, scrawled naked across that foamy desert
blood-backed on my belly
welting and weeping,
my teeth creeping out the jaw.
Guilt is a word for it.
I was trying to make good,
to make good
the ledgers, the debts, my debts,
my bluegrass grin
ethereal and muddybare
and hardly legible as once my hand,
and with a prayer reminding
the rebar crosses streaming down broadway
to make good too.
But where
and why in my lonesome,
have I forgotten?
I reckon up my teeth as friends often.
Call them my covenant
and my tongue the rainbow
that dries the blue ridge
to bone-coils in my spine.
The ship creaks. It settles
on the drain. I hear it suckling on the pine,
I hear its want. The animals stir
with themselves. Easy.
By dawn the sun comes up. The beaches
are bloated rags. The hills sopping on the sky.
I step out and greet the day. And am lone.
Oh Lord grab me by my nape
tell me it was worth it
to leave all them behind
and let me go free.
Illustration by Sophie Levy
Joan Tate is a sophomore at Columbia College planning on majoring in creative writing with a focus on poetry. Growing up moving across Virginia as a fifth generation pastor’s kid, her work focuses on confusions and conflicts surrounding gender, intertextuality, sexuality, God, classics, guilt, and the gap between Manhattan and Appalachia. Instagram.