God Is a Woman (Poem)

The truth sits,

elephant like,

in the living room

where we wait.

Here, the burning bush,

the mountain Moses had to climb

because I called the prophet

from the dark of the wilderness

to see the whites of his eyes.

reveals the secrets, finally.

His exodus a memory made

by the explosion of oceans, open,

and the death rattle of sons, first born,

from which I have spared this prodigal,

by the blood of a throat slit,

bleating the hot rush of my wrath

mingled with sweet mercy.

And here upon the mountain high,

with fire, and the holy chisel of my finger,

a pen,

this magic made before the earth was old,

will burn my oath into the rock and mineral

and eternal.

My demands made writ.

This ugly, sacred, awful, beautiful, covenant.

A divine script,

the precious hearts’ blood, an ink

that ties soul, and muscle, and bone,

to every exquisite and stunning

holy promise.

A promised land,

an exodus answered in milk and honey,

after the desert has burned away the golden traitors.

Names forgotten under pillars of salt,

the evil of their lies swallowed

in the howl of wind, a pathway seeded by poison.

A lash once laid upon flesh is now forgotten,

as new growth forgets the sting on bare backs

like a child without the scar of her parent’s chains,

as the braille of flesh and stifled skin

of older wounds makes way for younger hands,

soft and smooth,

a birth of perfect brown skin, as,

inside desert tents,

families are filed down by Death’s scythe,

yet life springs forth from blood red wombs,

a child, a life, anew,

like water, from behind my prophet’s rock,

a spring fresh and flowing,

a mother’s breast full to feed,

a Canaan. Home.

bvk. 2021.