“You are everything perfection could not be”
2023 • Torch Literary Arts
2021 • Poet Lore
2020 • Rust + Moth • Visit ➜
I will meet You in the stillness
I await Your voice in the quiet
I am listening, not with my heart
but with my obedience
I am obedient and yielding,
to Your molding hands
Bend me back into myself
Shape me as You first imagined
Remind me that my life does not belong to me,
it belongs to Your glory
My life, like every created thing, reflects Your glory
I join all of creation,
the tallest mountain, the deepest river,
the oldest tree, and cry
holy, the Lord God is mighty
My great-great grandmother, Sweetie, was just a girl when a Klan mob descended upon her father’s land. Born enslaved, her father, John Gaston, studied at Rust College after Emancipation and became a farmer in Mississippi. Too good of a farmer. Too proud of a man, who was once chattel.
That night, Sweetie remembered how her father loaded her, her siblings, and his wife into his horse and buggy; remembered how they escaped into the darkness with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Sweetie turned away from the mob and its lynch rope. She had never known such terror. And as she watched her father drive their family into safety, she had never known such valor.
Harry loved Narcissa
so he walked,
barefoot and black,
from plantation to plantation
to behold his wife, to hold his wife
before the Civil War
before paved roads
this love was their freedom
this love was their home
my love, I cannot have you
we’re both made of fire
if we were married
the house would burn down
Mama, how often have you
bent before God, bartering
your blood for my blessing?
This altar is soaked. You say
love is a sacrifice. I say love
returns what is given. For once,
i will be the broken body.
Come and eat the marrow
from my bone. Let me fatten
your soul.
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