TRAGIC Poem: The Fool, by Kaymin Hester

I was never meant to weather
this holy place, bearing the
wings winter loved, pale like
bloodless lips–
window panes frosted with the
heat of colliding bodies,
collarbones like glass birds,
wings forever flung wide.
I was born in the icy months and
I’ve never forgotten them,
hoarding each year behind
my molars, breathing them in
with the burn of cigarette smoke,
blood at the back of my throat.
the kiss of fool’s spring,
the mad without her meds,
whipping up hurricane winds in
my wake–hunting girl, hungry
girl, dying child of the killing
season, ebb and flow of the white-
capped swell. living temple to the
empty season, nothing sacred,
nothing safe.

I was always meant to
conquer this perfect storm, ringing
around poppy fields, distorting my
faithless dreams in which I wield
lightning, lighting up my faithless
heart, bone carved from clear quartz,
lapis lazuli straight to the vein.
la strega on holy ground, casting and
cursing as I am wont to do. worldless,
but never wordless; worthless, wretched
in the eyes of our foolish God. la strega
in sacred space: burned, buried, witch-
born and witch-bred by nothing but will
and word and way.

my offerings are for
the old gods and my sacrifices are at my
own altars, flesh shrine desecrated and
reconstructed to wipe the slate clean.
I’m breaking for my own sake, and all the
chapels, the votives, the rosaries in the
world couldn’t touch what I have become,
couldn’t begin to make me pure–cyclic
futility to which even God falls victim,
the madness of bearing my cross, my
immortal mutiny.

Author: poetryfest

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