Melissa Culbertson
the anathema anthem
Tonight, I believe in Sundays, sickened and slick, centipede-sizzle on the churchyard side- walk. I am a girl named for a bee, a ship named for a girl. A man will tell me to mind my moldings, hold my wine. My laugh is a flutesong I pin to a handkerchief. When I fill my mouth with cinnamondrops, hemlock, I can think of him and spit hexes. Tonight, I forget what's mooncow, what's bright.
anne boleyn's handmaid considers churchsongs
there are laws for this – the number of pearls sewn into a skirt, the angles of headdresses and hatpins. after daughters, stillborns, their arched devil's backbones - doll-tooth zippers fusing pink lace and tendons that snag like violin bows stroking hymns from thin rib-string. sing their names from the labels of dark jars, chapel glass. after the sword, the sever, her mouth will make a slurp-suck til the communion wafer melts. try as they might, the doctors will never be able to explain this.
Melissa Culbertson is the co-editor of blossombones, an electronic literary journal that features work about the female experience. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barn Owl Review, Thieves Jargon, Sawbuck and [GROWLING SOFTLY], among others. Her chapbook, The Fire-Wife, is currently available from Dancing Girl Press.
