Ablution
A proper baptism needs only
sure hands and water holy enough
to rinse away past selves, which is to say,
all wild water. After being released
from the hands of a man like a trout
in the Wyoming wilderness, let
the hole from the hook be small enough
that my mouth won’t flood with each
stroke upstream, but still big enough
for my tongue to remember. I recently
heard a former rabbi claiming that
we are starving for the sacred,
and it’s true. Some days I think
I wouldn’t mind being eaten alive
by coyotes as long as it’s done
ceremoniously. Sitting by the river
I find a wishbone-shaped stick
wedged in my boot. I make a deal
with myself, or against myself, depending
on how you look at desire. I assign
a wish to each hand and crack
the wood in half, hoping for the right
thing. I’m left handed but my right
hand always wins. My mother always
wins. Watching you watch the horses
storm the camp under the inked
black sky, the Tetons like jagged teeth
closing its hungry mouth around us,
the horses’ bodies strobing in frantic
fragments against the flashlight’s
ghostly beam, I realize the holiness
of the space between our bodies.
I decide, yes, I would let you
feed me to whatever is looming
beyond us, whatever has spooked
the horses into their midnight frenzy,
as long as you promise, afterward,
to lick my bones clean.
Dakota Reed is a writer and editor from Georgia. Her work has been published by Hayden's Ferry Review, The Shore, Blood Orange Review, and NELLE, and has received awards from The Poetry Society of South Carolina and the College of Charleston, where she received her MFA.