Fear by LuAnn Keener-Mikenas
As
when I lie down to the tenderness
of
your hands, and afterward
still
freeze to a halt: Fear
is
a killer. And the core of fear?
I
will open the stopped mouth, press
the
pencil point to the constant page/I will
find
it out, what seizes up the ventricles
all
my life. We must make names
for
the beings who want to destroy us.
When
the Alien queen mother came
toward
her, snapping out of that maw
a
second steel jaw trap—was that not
evil
incarnate? When that creature
streaked
toward her on honed
skates
of viciousness: do you remember
how
she stood her ground? That was what
wrenched
us so with hope. Even
clinging
to the edge of the last
bulwark,
heels blown with the out-rush
into
the void, we must not
give
up. The ancestors did not, nor those
numberless
whose names are lost.
Anne
Frank, a child aged a thousand years,
walked
with head up before the guards –
the
light that burned from her naked body
must
have blinded their eyes. How
shall
I not then love you? How shall I not
fling
with every ounce of strength
my
whole soul into the world? God does not
make
bad jokes—and if he does,
throw
him out. We can imagine a God
more
worthy, One whose nature
accounts
for some things. We can raise
in
our bodies together the Story
we
must tell and keep telling, this
is
the calling.
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