Here is the church. These are the doors that open to the sea.
My grandmother once knelt here, awed, a special guest to an exorcism.
It is nothing like the movies would have you think,
she told me, and I believed her.
They have called me many things between these aisles,
she told me, and I believed her.
That is the trouble with our trade, she said.
When men aspire to terrible jobs, we offer them hushed respect,
the blushing necks of virgins.
Women wearing the same gloves, sorting the same straight-backed pins
between the prayers of their teeth,
are taught to deserve nothing more than an acreage of sorrow.
Why an acreage?
Never give a woman more sadness than she needs.
From this fabric, from this persistent earth, she will wrangle
greater things than men can fathom.
She will wrestle squalling tar infants from the mire, and those children
shall stumble upwards, slicing through the spines of men
who have offended their mothers.
