Litany (Easter)
Kasey Jueds | Poetry
River of the flooded banks, of water muddied
………..to mahogany like over-steeped tea. River
where, come summer, my sister & I would float
………..our child-bodies over the deep place
by the bend, reach our feet down
………..to find the sandy bottom and fail.
River: fastened between banks by piles of shells
………..the otters left: stellular, gleaming pale
against the storm-flattened grass. River like
………..a steeple intent on its elsewhere, river giving
its name to the dead-end road, dividing
………..what we thought we knew
from what we never could. Riven, rising
………..all March, and then
Easter, when the sky held, the rains
………..didn’t come, and we were given
the old story to hold on our tongues: the one
………..of the stone, rolled away
from the tomb, and the woman
………..who stayed to weep. Years later, a different
version: when she finds him, she kisses
………..his feet. Come summer, our own feet would blur
to ghosts when we swam, blanched then vanished
………..into the river’s dim. Not quite
afraid, we’d draw our knees to our chests
………..where breasts were beginning to rise, until
we could see again what we half-thought
………..we’d lost, returned to us
because we’d asked. But before then
………..it was Easter, too cold to surrender
our bodies to water, and we did not know yet
………..how to give away pieces of ourselves, how
to play the old game of hide and hope
………..to be found.
Kasey Jueds’s first book of poems, Keeper, won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in journals including American Poetry Review, Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and Pleiades, and her reviews appear in Salamander, The Rumpus, Tar River Poetry, EcoTheo, and Jacket2. She lives in Philadelphia.
Featured Image by Hannes de Plessis