Leila Bilick
Summer 2024 | Poetry
Two Poems
For the Love of God
I live in a country
of fundamentalists now and a tumor
has appeared in my brain’s
left side which I’m told is controlled
by the right Halleluya
The problem is God
has hidden God’s face for millennia and we
who are animals in darkness
only we’re not, are we
That’s what hurts so much: booming consciousness
Halleluya
What to do
with all this awareness
of what we’ve lost.
Yellow
The head is a balloon
pulling away
to further and further moons
Goodbye I love you on your yellow
string
unstrung
sung only in the unhumanest
of heavenly terms now – call to us
no more
Leila Bilick’s poetry has appeared in American Literary Review, Lilith Magazine, The Coachella Review, Book of Matches, and Soundings East, among others. She has an MA in English from UMass Boston. She works as a copy editor and poetry workshop facilitator, and lives in Los Angeles with her daughters.