BAPTIZED
When he eased me into the river
I was supposed to feel God coming clean in me
but all I could see was the black kitten, scrawny
when its mama went off and left it, flies
in its eyes, and daddy saying the best thing to do
was put it out of its misery, so I named it
Mercy, while he held it under water—his hand
a stone, so big I couldn’t see its struggle,
but could feel it, same way I always feel
the wounded or afraid—soon as I walk in a room,
we’re family—flight of swallows, storm
of fish, bubbles rising from their mouths,
a stream in the water, the kitten’s last breath,
and mine, as he pulls me up—his hand, a hook
between my shoulder blades, and he calls me
by my baptized name, but the drowning in my blood
has already named me something else.
—from Rattle #84, Summer 2024
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Danielle Jones: “When I found the book—its corner torn, its red cover creased—my sister was gone. I held the poetry anthology because she was no longer there to hold me, tell stories, or sing me to sleep. I gobbled up the words left behind (not much else for a child to eat in that house of grief). I dined on Dickinson, Cummings, Dunn, Sexton and Orr, Frost, Clifton, Rich, Keats. Their poems filled the bowl inside me.”
