by Christy Karefa-Johnson

There was the night I stood battered
and so infused with God
at my mother’s door
with no flowers,
worming towards the cracks in her structure
with the marrow of a fallen angel
smeared between the knuckles.

There we watched the daytime sputter
and spit loose molars of white light to the sky.
We’ve heard, though no one’s ever told us,
that in the levitating folds
of each evening’s pink exodus
a messiah is returning every second.

There is something that knows the Earth as an ant

Maybe the manatee that tries to swim
and just gets cut.

Painting “Earth 2614” by Ashley Straker