COVENANT FOR THE PEOPLE I HAVE CREATED
by Dana Blatte
Three times God reflected
the earth, the sky, and the shadow-
belly below. Doors gaping from walls
blessed and sticky with pitch.
Soon the sky will bend in.
You do not sleep for a year
while the waves divorce their sounds there
but never there. You do the right thing.
You deliver the clean and slaughter the rest.
*
The flood begins. Night bleeds, day bleeds, and still
you have not slept without a shadow. In your belly,
you plant worry. It slings from your fists,
draining like light upon the scalps of waves.
You would not listen to them if they tried.
God told you of the flood-hero. How water holds
the body. How the sky can buckle as a kiss.
God is there but never there.
You marry this animal.
The roof springing out from the reeds,
from the pitch, from the ground raw
against the horizon. Soon the continents will end.
God will tell you how to interpret this.
Click to see Dana’s work in the Fall ‘23 issue