REVISING IT INTO SOMETHING I CAN BEAR

                    by Lisa Mecham 

What if instead, a cathedral
ceiling all cherubs and doves,
glass stained. My small back
cool upon the smooth
stones. Look! I too can make
an angel, arms, legs cast
apart. If not God, then who
is showing me how to sin?
The fire. Raging, anointing.
My sweet one, this baptism
is always gonna hurt. Wicked
grafted to peace in the
smoked silence of charred
wood. In the release of clenched
fists. In the oval mouth
at the rise of the child’s why.


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​Lisa Mecham writes a little bit of everything and her work has appeared in Catapult, Amazon’s Day One and BOAAT, among other publications. A Midwesterner at heart, Lisa lives in Los Angeles with her two daughters where she’s finishing a book about mental illness in the suburbs.