The world holds crescents in a cerulean sky
Jostling with stars that in syncopation lie
With the darkness
In homes and hearts
Tomes and marks
Chiselled on the walls
Did you pray today did you pray today did
You
Wash the blood off your hands?
The stain on your lands
The twist in your parts
Our hearts
Crisp and monastic
While our limbs lingered there in the silt
Calling to one another like oily birds
Will you wash yourselves will you wash yourselves will you
Wash
Those homes and hearts?
Bleeding parts
Of some great horned beast
His arteries the streets
Clogged with jostling worshippers
And Philistine foreskins
Curdling and curling inwards
Crisp like burnt plastic
Latrines the gutters
And dusty shutters
That wink prying eyes at one another
Have you prayed today have you prayed today have you
Into the dusk.
At home,
A mother strangles a bird with scarlet thread
While windowmen
Wash the blood off cedar doorposts
Door hosts
In Sodom
Evangeline Hester
Evangeline spent her childhood between three countries and seven cities as the child of missionaries. She now studies linguistics and ancient Hebrew, with a passion for Old Testament exegesis.
