Glossolalia
Madeleine Dale
How do we chart the thoroughfare
of divinity through flesh – as
wine poured down a hollow throat, or
sparked between grasping, holy hands
on hermeneutic pulse point?
Are these god-whispers a shadow symptom
passing, or a madness that lingers
in the keratin, disease fit for the cutting
tools. Are we ever alone, at the formica table?
How easily I forget what came before this:
the road resurfaced, the field
constructed; how impossible to know
if we stand now in the continuance of life
or on its grave.
And did Jeanne’s lover, or Teresa’s,
ever look up from the sacrament of inoculation
soft skin, and wonder, as I do,
if they would see God’s eyes staring back.
Cauldron Anthology
35