Tremulous Heart

Caleb calls me sweetmeat With cloth Sister Marie stuffs
his mouth & warns Don’t let him touch you

Sister Marie speaks softly Christ wants you spotless
I want stigmata She says they appear on clean girls

who never let boys play with their privates She catches
Caleb & me twisted together forces me to kneel

on top of rice—digging into flesh scouring every cell
No more nasty girl

Like angel wings her arms lift me as she bends down
kissing my knees blood smeared over trembling lips

Chella Courington (she/her) is a writer/teacher whose poetry and fiction appear or are forthcoming in numerous anthologies and journals including DMQ Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Anti-Heroin Chic. She was raised in the Appalachian south and now lives in California with another writer and two feline boys. Her recent microchaps of poetry are Hell Hath (Maverick Duck Press), Good Trouble (Origami Poems Project), and Lynette’s War (Ghost City Press). Twitter: @chellacouringto; Instagram: @chellacourington.