Published in Edition Four (2024) as part of the Tales of an Unforgiving Land column.
There’s an old
church
out the back
of town. Nobody knows
how long it’s been?
since the last one left.
The Pray-ers, I mean.
Bits of them
stayed scattered
around like a graveyard,
chewed up and spat
back out at least
that’s what
they think the bluestone
won’t go without a struggle.
My grandfather says
it’s still hungry.
The air tastes
bitter with dry like
a mouth full of cotton balls,
at points of weakness
dry veins
crack crying
hoping for verdure
I’m left
with birch bleached and stale
white fingers to hang
my washing from.
Weatherboards grate tin into stubble
the wind finds time’s
bullet holes to
shoot dust
off the kitchen floor
gaps enough to
see the ribs of cobbled bone,
starving and beaten blue
Black.
Sometimes I whisper
the only prayer
I still remember
a fragment after all
the times
I copied it
out,
hot white pokers boring through
a neck scorched black.
On empty Sundays
Dad’s sister whispers
like scattered sands cutting
underfoot,
I liked it better before
they left.
We don’t
let her in anymore.