[Redacting] Roll-ups POEM

A poem, part of The 2nd Burden Anthology.

Our love. Your maternal preparations. 

With exquisite care, methodical precision,

you commence with your craft in intimate

expression: a cigarette. Born a roll-up. 

Blessed as we struggle against Bethlehem's 

night. 

Some might stop to ponder, put upon me

word Pariah. Blasphemer. But if they'd seen

your hands - supple silk and white - and their

rehearsed insular assembling movements;

I watched with genuine reverence 

as though you'd stitched a Shroud - Turin. 

Every ""mannish"" thing that you do, 

with the excellence of your femininity.

God, there's a warmth in all that wisdom,

something aflame, true, in that brutish 

business that you deal in. 

[Not to be distracted] 

How inadequate I sometimes feel; 

watching two wholes move in you. 

While I'm not quite sure I make it up to one. 

How you're working harder against the wind. 

You're the one, like a soldier, trying to coax

something out the lighter. Swearing at

the rain in your foxhole. 

What good is it to Mary... 

when Joseph can only sit,

thinking about her hands.

Pledging fealty to each 

digit.

[I might redact this; I will redact this] 

?

Reviews

[Fabian G. Franklin]

This poem brings to mind (not a song, as some poems do) but a painting. Specifically Edouard Manet's, Luncheon on the Grass. Maybe that's a blasphemy too but it was a mental impression. I enjoyed this.