October came like a bandit who stole <br />every prayer saved in our afternoons of grief, <br />beside her empty bed and crucifix <br />where she once joked, holding her Bible, <br />of Christ lighting Judas's ass on fire. <br />They were friends now and she had been invited <br /> <br />to see this, as told in my dream, invited <br />me, but mother woke me before Death stole <br />me, almost gone into the sinner's fire. <br />But Grandmother Juana gone this October grief <br />would have saved me I know with her Bible <br />near bed, radio sermon and crucifix, <br /> <br />Would have joked of how she snuck the crucifix <br />away from church friends she hadn't invited, <br />to exchange gossip as they kissed her Bible, <br />the way words caress bloody Death who stole <br />our every prayer saved in our afternoons of grief, <br />laughing aloud of that dreamy fire, <br /> <br />that brash tail of a kite, high and afire, <br />and hovering above like a crucifix, <br />its childlike frame torn in the wind of grief: <br />how she flew and how we fly, she invited <br />me above our house one October that stole <br />our love, investing it into her Bible <br /> <br />that loves no blashphemy for the Bible <br />adores least those living in the Lake of Fire. <br />October came like a bandit who stole <br />Mami, our Juana, leaving her crucifix, <br />together in a dream where she invited <br />me to the sky where rain fell hard like grief. <br /> <br />And I awoke secretly with this grief <br />Kept like a tomb in my chest for her Bible, <br />our rosaries, yet she wanted me invited <br />to see Christ lighting Judas's ass on fire, <br />a party where they carry a crucifix <br />every October for sinners who stole, <br /> <br />including Death, who took her into that fire <br />to burn her small sins before Heaven invited <br />her, that eloquent joker, dead this October.<br /><br />MARINA GIPPS<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/juana-s-sestina/
