Damned If

When we left the room, still locked in character

by tartan jumpers and the beetle-wings of our mary

janes, my sister said the people had been creepy.

Inside, we’d joined a circle of clammy hands

while strangers rocked and shuddered, babbled

in tongues. In the rearview mirror, my father’s eyes

hovered. This, he said, was God’s native tongue—the language

we needed to get help. But I didn’t feel God in that room.

Instead: stir-fried syllables, unfamiliar touch. Voices

untangled from sense, soaking me in a burning

spring. It was a kind of pleasure: mind drowsy, eyes vague

at the blackboard, the slate of night hanging velvet

down the windows. Like a crown of light, this fervor

was almost enough to make you believe in it, a show of force:

ocean smashing up under an edifice of rock.