JUKE
JOINT
Liturgical Considerations For Whatever It Takes
​
For the anger
we erect hours endure
For the dreamless bed
we pathos marital sex
For the lack of pragmatism
we rhetoric victim
For the blame
we unbearable season bear it
For the calendars
we watch what we say
For the glass house we become
we call ceremony
For the book thrown the door slammed
we call desire
For the waiting the waiting
we order takeout
For the money borrowed
we call horizon
For the accidents of water of air
we call normal
For the phone call the voicemail
we what what do we
For the marks of our aging
we call it whatever you want
For the wingless askings
we barter for
For the Darwinian birdsongs
we doubt the
For the Galilean moons
we for the
For the prayers
we for the
For the baby
we
For the
Niobe
​
I will kill the babies myself I say
like a good woman the story of my tears
is the story of my bleeding all my shedding
every month I emerge a crying stone
curl in my socket of dried blood
as my body kills the babies one by one
and after I wash myself clean
I wash myself where their blood ran
through me I wash until there is no blood
wash until there is no skin or muscle
until there is no body until there are no
hands I wash until the water runs dry
until I am a rough stone, stone down
to the heart of me and I do not even cry
Liturgy of the Uterus
​
A ritual act in the interior storm
I stagger back white lilies on my cuff creeping up my sleeve
Deep in my body my asymptote my infinity my utterly
Hopeless urge severing an artery metaphorically obviously
Because my surgeon is lovely white lilies on his lapel
He wants the best for me
At my most animal I writhe in a rite of savage
I do not suffer silently this is having it all
I am a patron of want white lilies on my hem
Servant of begging let this body be good
Let it marauder its best absolutions
Let it swagger grand free-fall
Out of itself a vast desert blows through me
Who am I praying to?
Approaching zero this coming home
Sara Femenella received an MFA in poetry from Columbia University and a Masters in Education from Brooklyn College. Her poems have been published in Pleiades, The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, Denver Quarterly, Salamander and Dossier, among others. She is a reluctant transplant of Los Angeles, where she is a mother, a wife, a teacher, a writer, and a bad driver. She is finding and losing herself again and again.