Lindsay Bernal

Winter 2023 | Poetry

Two Poems

Brief History of My Catholicism

 

Hotboxing in my K-car with Abby,

the star of my school, the whole state,

the Can of Worms interchange abuzz

 

above us, I was waiting for the bridge

in “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”

—in my own slump, not head-in-the-oven,

 

head-on-into-the-deep-end-of-the-river

serious but an obstacle nonetheless—

in the Wendy’s parking lot, all air piano

 

and virginal, my breasts barely breasts,

miles from what was happening

closer to home on the trestle over the canal:

 

their Olan Mills portraits on a loop on the local news.

In confession, I said I was jealous—they died

in each other’s arms in love—and Father O’Connor,

 

behind the curtain, demanded I take it back.

When I told him an old man

had exposed himself to me on the towpath

 

the priest asked why I was walking alone

without one of my brothers.

I remember feeding the ducks

 

as the stranger’s pants came down,

waving to the packet boat

named for another Rochester hero

 

who disappeared into the Genesee

after a failed dare—Sam Patch hadn’t meant

to die, he’d planned other jumps

 

from bridges higher than High Falls.

This isn’t a very good story.

Sir Elton sings his better, rewritten by Taupin

 

with the ridiculous Sugar Bear,

the assonantal i flooding the chorus.

Death’s, of course, clichéd, winged,

 

a whispering butterfly,

and maybe J + M are angels

free to fly, fly away, high away, bye-bye.

 


Nostalgia List

  

the dirty Potomac

over which we’re held

inert due to a signal problem

 

schedule adjustment

the collective heat of us

late frustrated trapped

 

contagious yawning

one cough a cacophony

that doesn’t cause alarm

 

too-loud singing

someone brushing past

hurried harried

 

an unawareness of boundaries

bodies the sun the same

unremarkably setting rising

 

no one calling their friends their pod

eating a lavish meal out

what about necking

 

a not so public display that ends

before the elevator lifts us

into a glass-canopied

 

courtyard of orchids

the fountain the children wade in

barefoot hand-in-hand

 

I even miss bad allegorical art

that obscure canvas

in the museum mezzanine

 

stealth goddess

in a see-through peignoir

crystal ball

 

above her in midair

taunting or disciplining

the unclothed cherub

 

with wiry red curls

like my quarantined nephew’s

search words nude

 

landscape other

mother and child

evening ruins time

Lindsay Bernal is the author of What It Doesn't Have to Do With (University of Georgia Press, 2018), winner of the National Poetry Series. Poems from her in-progress, second manuscript have appeared in Full Bleed, the Georgia Review, New England Review, Oversound, Poem-a-Day, and other journals. She coordinates the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Maryland.

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