to homepage
back to poetry
   
 

Inside the House
By Lucy Jilka


She told me this and never
repeated it how he would

push her off the tractor, leave
her standing. He never talked

much. A tractor rolled over
him the day before I was

born, not a scratch. She told me
absolution comes twisted

around a blue-eyed Jesus.
A willow branch whip will cleanse

me of iniquity. Scratched
skin will tear away until

nothing is left. Blessed, she
who offers herself up like

a holocaust. Gravity
does not relinquish a man.

He stayed in the fields the day
I was born. She told me this.

Two fingers near his heart, cut
open, cut off across air.

A limb removed and left on
the kitchen table. Every

room is a backside slipping
into a ravine. Inside

the house with a wooden bench,
blue high-backed chair, in a room

with a concave, sunken name
water glass two fingers full

a sloping downward curls me
into a corner. Under

a bed, ravines flood across
a blank place, torn fabric or

torn flesh to cover a face
a back slap scattering fair

weather and warning.

 

 

 

 

 

Lucy Jilka’s work has appeared in Corroboree, The Cincinnati Poet's Collective, American Voice, WordWrights, So To Speak, 580 Split, kill author and Eclectica. She holds an MFA in Poetry from George Mason University and lives and works in Washington, D.C.

 

 

© 2010 prickofthespindle.com