M. J. Gette



apologia, or the lightning field


the charged boy
shattered then won back
lost marbles; got a veiny scar
from

a Lightning storm // the mother (aquifer
whose hands
were bowls
wept into them, filling
up where the dam left off)

conducted cures in
mythic categories: so all the light
came to what
she staked in the ground

woman Oil & field for
(electric racemes
woven—
too many competing elements)

she let liquid slip
through the cracks in her
hand(rock hard rock)
so he’d rest
as if floating in the dead sea

surreptitious & outdone
by his deception. Holy fruit she
held in what they call
salts for preservation.

(baby boy baby boy
his eyes
catching those of bad advice
& woman warned
against)

she tied her hair back, he spit
in her face, then vanished—

a pine-wood crucifix warped
in the heat to resemble a shape
closer to helplessness

those palisades fenced in (
the Area for hidden ductwork
and origami shapes
of ideal nations
)lightning lighting
the field

she came
with her hands out for water
and was told to vacate
the premises: (she thought
he was the vessel
for someone
she knew)

the mistake
deserves
its own
cry

yes



M. J. Gette is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Minnesota. Her poems have been published in Eratio, Ditch, Rufous City Review, Fugue, Indefinite Space and elsewhere.
 
 
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