Agnosticism and after
by Michael Lista
[ poetry - june 07 ]
The night the attic creaked to life above our beds, started speaking.
Static back draft from dad's satellite
dish or a pack
of raccoons squatting, scuttling toward God on dull-clawed paws.
Or the oak ghosts of roof beams,
roofied, hacked clean
from roots, set scalene in the ceiling and now somehow shocked
conscious, Twister-limbed and tangled up
in drywall, wind-whipped,
moaning forest. Mom is sick again with worry for us and the wet wall
drawls hourly down the hall.
Her intestines squawk
religious while your head rests, restless, fighting thought's wet heft,
your mattress softening your body's
marriage to Becoming.
A rosary fast in one of your small palms and the blanky Nanny knit
you in the other, you wait moon-eyed
for weird-skied
morning, when we'll meet uniformed and older at the front door,
where the staircase corkscrews saw-toothed
into floorboards,
lips spackled with prayer. And colder.
