After Reading the Bible
- After Reading the Bible
The baby wakes up, not forgetting where she is but that she’s sick, and cries. The bloodhound opens his eyes not forgetting he’s a dog but that he can smell yesterday. The lover wakes up who’s not forgotten the time, but that she’s unloved the way a car door is, and I hear a ghost rising who’s not forgotten he’s dead but that he’s never traveled the subway in skin. The stone wakes up not forgetting its age but that it sounds like a grassy distance while a coffin doesn’t forget that it’s buried but that the dirt takes it the way air takes the buttons of a young buck, and the last star simmers, so far after us, forgets it will burn out, forgets that not even light will attend its funeral. [End Page 122]
C. L. O’Dell’s poems are published or forthcoming in Asheville Poetry Review, Many Mountains Moving, and Texas Review, among other journals. He received an M.A. at Manhattanville College, where he served as Poetry Competition Editor of Inkwell. Currently, he is an M.F.A. candidate in poetry at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
