MY BODY IS A CHURCH

I have built myself into the architecture

of this house its bones ache

silent messages scribed in tiny imploding dream

worlds that visit me while I lay blankly in a bed of scripture–

how many words have I inhaled because of you? My body

is nailed to the t of trans fix ation, trans form ation

but always a cost, accosted while I sleep by remnants

of a forlorn church its pews slice rows of petulance with bobbing

gray heads nodding yes and, oh how I want

to say yes not to a god or the many gods I have

placed on my altar (god of shame, god of good, god of nothing)

how I want to say yes to a garden

of spindly yearnings that desicate the architecture

of that good and that god and grow like ivy cracking

marrow– it happens this time each year

my dreams turn toward death chiming while I kneel

in the shadow of my own spell casting stones at stained-

glass windows as my eyes, too, shatter and blind

Shannon Marzella is a poet and teacher from Connecticut. Her poetry has been published by Sky Island Journal, Stonecoast Review, Glacial Hills Review, San Pedro River Review, and is forthcoming in White Stag Publishing's #SPIRIT anthology. Shannon is pursuing an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University.