we sipped blood siphoned from grocery store grapes
Because matrons squinted at the dim crackling pages of hymnals
Because we obediently warbled exactly what we found there
Because spurting prompt hallelujahs was serious business
Because my mother’s gilded tooth flashed when she begged
Because on Sundays we presented God with several options
Because Rev. Thomas’s sick ankles were stiff and blue with fluid
Because his spat truths were mangled by bad tooth and spittle
Because he made seventy-two years move like some golden engine
Because Tony the choir director was, how you say it, a sissy
Because that old organ wailed like the B-side of a backslap
Because the pocked wooden floor left language on our knees
Because the rafters grew slimy with wailing, because, well,
because Judas, a pimp in blacklight, was smirking at Jesus again
Because somebody definitely acted up and conjured Mississippi
Because salt pork flailed in a skillet in the basement kitchen
Because Lawd knows we were all gon’ be crazy hungry
Because the Holy Ghost was dawdling in the men’s room
Because He had scanned the crowd and wasn’t crazy about His odds
Because the grandbabies of freed slaves shimmied in their seats
Because every upright elder in the front row blathered with fever
Because crosses, unblessed with bodies, were everywhere
Because every one of those wooden T’s bellowed something out loud
Because, just like last time, the fun-word-of-the-day was sacrifice
Because that sissy popped like a tear dripped on a red stovetop
Because he flowed our whole upturned voice from his fingers
Because worshippers with straightened hair wept slivers of Delta
Because we were a tangled mess of sanctified thighs and tongues
Because several instigators whispered Just felt the Ghost come in
Because Annie Pearl Smith’s dazzled eyes got all-the-way wide
Because her numbed and hard-girdled waistline twisted in bliss
Because thick bodies hit the floor hard, squalling, convulsing,
Because prim ushers dug white-gloved fingers into her forearms
Because I had to gaze into the peppermint of my mother’s wail
Because I questioned what soft, holy monster writhed inside her
Because I had once again been spared the slick sleight hand
of the devious divinity, because that twirling sissy and I
loved wrong and were loved wrong, because when Tony sniffed
haughty at the thrashing, collapsing congregation and whipped the choir
in the direction of flame, I felt the organ’s bright asking drip like fuel
into the blood feeding my little hip. So I struck the match.