The Bugler Responds to Mary
- The Bugler Responds to Mary
after Annunciation by Upper Rhenish Master, and Congressman Todd Akin’s public remarks about “legitimate rape”
What will He do, slut, if you refuse? He will silence your voice,break your reed, have you stripped
and flayed. Make you my mute, my spit rag, my instrument case,merely a vessel to swell, split, and spill fruit.
Without God what water, what soil, what salt, what sun?I, mouthpiece, claim absolution
and absolute reign under his reign. Have you seen how a trumpetis made? Silver stamped thin,
rolled, bent, and crimped like a thread. God does that with breath,and absent his breath all song is scat,
broken like chaff across his long staff. We live at his sufferance,and you, you are the pear-shaped note
he allows me to choose—or not—to blow. If it is really rape,then you will not ripen. If you refuse,
I could teach you the blat-blat interval between bravado and fear,but it’s moot; it’s already done—
He spoke, and I blared into your ear—a son. [End Page 599]
rebecca foust’s book, Paradise Drive, won the Press 53 Poetry Award and was reviewed in the Georgia Review, Harvard Review, Philadelphia Inquirer, and San Francisco Chronicle. Recognitions include the American Literary Review Fiction Award, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Frost Place, MacDowell, and Sewanee.
