Psalm for God’s Mother
plead with god in secret. o, moonlight. how you witness me
crack open like no other. here, i am on my knees praying god
will make me boy. my grandmother overhears and i know
god said no. o, body, wretched, unholy thing. you have never
survived a man’s gaze; so if god is a man, tell him i don’t want
him watching me change into myself. coming out
of a suffocating womanhood i have been forced to call home.
tonight it is a drowning. a royal asphyxiation. body drenched
in an unknowing of future. i am not allowed boyhood. i do it
anyway. the moonlight listens and i yell: if god is a man, tell him
i’d like to meet his mother. o, goddess. woman of the changing
leaves. turn me over like springtime. i am body ever-churning.
o, mother. press your hands to my chest. push my body into
wax-coated wings, pristine. please. i don’t want to see the shame
in them. yes, mother. i run off the cliff and fly this time. the sun
cannot stop me. i am free. i gift myself a new name, etched
on the back of my hand with a quill from my spine and mother:
i am still life as the sun melts my wax. behind me, every feather
becomes a bird. they sing and i become that sound. fill the air.
i smile and now i am the thing illuminating. o, goddess, i am
the sun. i will not die. on earth, my mother is warmed in my
light. eternity passes. and passes. and passes. and i am always
the sun. her son.
by Charlie Blodnieks
from Muzzel Magazine, Summer 2019