← v1n1, Spring 2002
Poetry · Volume 1, Number 1

Deliverance

after Chagall

What kind of Moses

would arrive in the form

of a rooster tall enough

a feathered saddle

iridescent, not with sweat?

One roll of his red eye

and this unrepentant woman

mounts up, clings to wattle

and tendon, leans her ear to his beak

to catch each triangular

syllable tremulous as dawn.

Her doubts burrow

deep into down, she strokes

veins at the base of his throat,

feels the faint tick of faith

just out of reach.

The silty creek of her mind

cannot yet float

that rowboat where some tiny god's

giving one of the chosen

a free ride to the other side