TWO POEMS

By Lauren Scyocurka

Lamb

The second heart

beat above my head

It was like a set sun

giving warmth

behind the skin

that connected us

kept us separate

Then it was time

for me to learn

for the first time

the impossibility

of going backwards

The heart which

beat so close it

felt it beat inside

my own chest

grew louder moved

so rapidly I realized

our entanglement

had been fulfilled

to live we could not

share a body anymore

lock ourselves inside

our one arrangement

Though what I wanted

was what I knew

my mother all of time

the knowledge of my bones

a home so deep

it was myself and my birth

its dismantling

it was time

to leave my first body

and no one had seen me before

nobody knew me

Abraham’s Child

The stars were clear

like a ladle of water being

poured over our heads

I knew what he’d been promised

that he’d father

this many children but we were only

one pair he and I

since my birth it was this way

We set out together in the darkness

I could have fallen asleep

except for the sense that the heavens

were about to turn away from us

and we’d remain as we were then

father and daughter

crossing the uncertain ground

I didn’t yet know the word for grief

so I let the windswept field

the image of

my father walking alone

ahead of the donkey

and the firs and obscured rocks

think for me

The empty field became a slope then steeper

and steeper

The donkey’s sides heaved beneath

my legs His hair

was coarse and matted

At last we stopped

My father lifted me

from the animal no more heat

no more breath except

my own

and he spun me around

in his arms prolonging that

moment when I trusted him

and he set me down beside an orange tree

and went a little ways off

Perhaps he didn’t know that I was also speaking

with god then

as I looked into the tree’s

green boughs and counted

the orange orbs

I’d been told before

that this was my inheritance

not the tree but the flowering

itself

and that I would bear

children someday

and I knew

though I couldn’t have said so at the time

that this distinguished me

even from god for god is a consciousness and I am

the one who brings life into the world

Then the light began to climb into the boughs

and the fruit glowed

as though they were each

a small planet in eclipse

We built the altar

where I was to die together

moment by moment one piece

of wood at a time

I felt my father’s hand

lay heavy over my eyes

and listened to his familiar

voice begin to introduce me

in this strange way to god

as though I were a lamb rather

than a girl

and then he addressed me

as I lay there this voice behind the weight

the darkness

the oranges throbbing behind my

eyes