“CONTRITION”
It was an act. The dawn…
of overripe fruit. We trusted…
the sky to stay flourishing…
We trusted the dirt not to turn…
into sand beneath our feet. A…
body of prayer, we burned…
our tongues without noticing…
our mothers found us out…
The physical joining of bodies…
a miracle, a curse. This wedding…
We are from this world…
…it will cost me so much to open
…and I am hungry. I am cued up
…and I want the poem to move as if
…it is young and self-serving and
…my cunt wants the pastoral to die
…and my cunt wants this to accrue
…until the whole world is covered
…and we could never pay what we owe
…and when it happens come look where
…I will die gut severed open between
…the winter trees.
Julianne Neely
received her MFA degree from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where she received the Truman Capote Fellowship, the 2017 John Logan Poetry Prize, and a Schupes Fellowship for Poetry. She is currently a Poetics PhD candidate and an English Department Fellow at the University at Buffalo.
Twitter: @juleneely