Slippery Package: A prayer poem by Isabella Ides

She speaks a various language.

 

Bound in the bardo bereft

vaguely present, almost dead.

For fucking shining aloud

let me

 

back in. Come again, sweet terror

Carve my shadow on your cave walls

Render me a soul, source me

mystify, crush, obscure me

in that deep gorge

confine, stretch, reveal me

Let me wobble

stand.

 

Details shift. In my Earth days

I admired your clouds, your starry nights,

dew on a green field. Once

I saw a four-legged future

bucking goat girl—

lost bride tramping

veiled in dandelion fur.

 

I am she who prays you,

breaks your water—

a brook sluicing blood song

scoring your legs, O Organ Mistress

grant one more red escape.

Birth me again!

Let me abandon all hope and

 

Enter here

kiss the mouth of the new world, suckle its air

emerge dark-eyed in a slick white coat, braying—

a knobby-kneed girl with a pink tongue

water beading in my beard.

 

Title: From a Mary Oliver poem, A Meeting, 1984  

Epigram: From a William Cullen Bryant poem, Thanatopsis

 

Isabella Ides is a poet, playwright, and novelist. Most recently her trilogy, White Monkey Chronicles, was awarded the 2019 Jemma Prize for Speculative fiction and has garnered critical praise for its multi-culturalism and feminist depiction of radical spiritual hospitality. Isabella is looking forward to the premier of her newest play, Jo & Louisa in July of 2019. Winner of several theatre accolades, including a Critic’s Forum Award for Coco & Gigi, and Echo Theater’s National Big Shout Out for The Early Education of Conrad Eppler, Isabella is also the author of a collection of poetry, Getting Dangerously Close to Myself, the creator of the acclaimed Magdalene Mass. www.WhiteMonkeyChronicles.com