I was born into a Bible,
between
Genesis and Leviticus.
Those bright little apples?
too green to pick,
how dare I weep
when little black ticks
fell from burning bushes
and stuck?
My father tweezered them out
one by one,
so many teeny iniquities.
When I was six,
he read the bit
about that unforgivable sin—
blasphemy—
which I knew
I would commit
if I hadn’t already. Didn’t his God
visit peccadilloes
unto the fourth and fifth generation
and by third grade,
wouldn’t I be tied to an altar
with no sacrificial lamb
appearing in the thicket?
Hadn’t my mother
already
tied me in a chair?
So perhaps even
believers can understand
it was revelation
when I read
those Greek myths,
and realized
there were gods
far more merciful
because they were
far more wicked
than I could ever be.
Lois Marie Harrod’s 18th book Spat was published in June 2021. Her collection Woman won the 2020 Blue Lyra Prize. Nightmares of the Minor Poet appeared in June 2016 (Five Oaks. Dodge poet and lifelong teacher, she has been published in journals from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. www.loismarieharrod.org
