;
Soft
The folding chairs at church
Voices leavened
with laughter
Light soaking up
white diamonds
on the curtain’s fabric
My stomach stretched to hold
two I suck in to fit
my brown dress
The ring of the bell
dismissing us
from Sunday School,
and the teacher’s voice
intoning
verses he’s marked red
His hair,
a wreath of blond feathers
Soft
The doctrine is an egg
in its shell
I can’t swallow
God
a giant, heart-shaped pillow
with a small button-up
There, the shiny marble
of our universe
quivers,
thorned and slaphappy
I shiver
in my chair
on the back row,
missing the shawl
of your arm
around my shoulders
;
Dayna Patterson is guilty of writing poetry during church. For her bio, click here.
If you would like to submit your work to Psaltery & Lyre, please check out the P&L Submissions Page.
It’s beautiful, Dayna.
Love the contrast between the softness of the speaker, and the hardness of the doctrine in its shell…
Thanks, Angela and Sarah.
This inspires me to write, inspite of being intimidated by it.
Yes, Dayna, as Sarah said, the contrast of the softness and the eggshell hardness (and sharpness?) of the teachings, and also (from the ambiguities of the absence of punctuation) the stupendous effort to swallow God. You might not have meant this, Dayna, but it is there. I like it.
The one infelicity that did take me, one that might reflect the ways of American speech, was the image of stomach stretched to hold two. I get the literal picture of a replete stomach. Would ‘belly’ serve better, presumably for bigness with child.
A lovely piece, Dayna.