Eva SKRANDE

CHURCH

Within your arches, I am moon and corn.
Church where winter crows, church of souls
that wear shoes, church of birds playing hopscotch.
My tribes and your thighs' rivers are one.
O altar of horses and sweat,
O hymns where corn marries braille.
Look at the flowers dangling their knees from the pews
of your shoulders, the hundred brides
that sprout from your wine's gauntlet.
A thousand solitudes light on your brow's nave
where they kneel like lost soldiers
and ask to forget the mothers whose haycarts bled,
and ask for brides to kiss their burdens,
and ask, and are granted, shoes
that have known neither hunger nor death.

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