Dipping Well
When I was to genuflect,
When I was to genuflect,
I always second-guessed
Which knee to bow.
I felt surreptitiously suspect
If I were to lower a left
When right was the convention.
When I looked upon the cross,
I sometimes paused long enough
To utter the words
In name of father, son, holy ghost.
Often I sped through, leaving room
For mother, daughter, need this most.
I often bent my fingers into the dipping well,
Painting my forehead with the blessed drops,
Wondering which color they would burn
If I were in the wrong.
Conspicuous, I eyed the other girls in pews,
Searching for their pigtails laced and bound.
Were there a leak in the font
Would it lead me to them?
Trick Candles
3:12
"Hostage Situation in suburban parking lot."
A school bus detours down my street.
"Amber situation in Ambler, Pennsylvania".
My cousin's wife left him the empty house there,
A virulent situation without ventilation.
The contractor's staple gun clips.
He was spitting acid wash from a hose on the corner house yesterday
While the plumbers dug a human-sized hole in front of my house.
My bladder is too full to levitate me to look
If the cautionary horses are upright
If broken chairs have fallen prey to the anarchists:
If the new squat has one less squatter, one more with good posture.
4:03
"A man dressed in black was standing on a fountain with two suitcases.
Capitol police tackled him and exploded them."
The buzz-buzzing sounds like the pesticide I wish I had earlier
To seal some between screen and glass
Where I'd trapped my cat's paw, where i'd trapped a queen bee.
Another sunny day wasted.
It's the act of inhaling I can't quite shake
No matter how long it is between.
Bonnie MacAllister's work has appeared The Feminist Journal, Paper Tiger Media, nth Position, Small Spiral Notebook, and Magnaphone, among others. Her visual art has appeared most recently at the Main Line Art Center, DC Arts Center, the Philip Ratner Museum, AIR Gallery (NYC), Penn State, Holy Family College, the Inquirer Building, and High Wire Gallery (Philadelphia). MacAllister has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
