CAROLINE CABRERA


                                     



INTERCESSORY PRAYER




There was always a man
between me and the lord.

I learned to be a woman,
disbelieved but fruitful,

a body uncooperative. I learned
to hide behind a veil, to confess,

to search a child brain
for signs of weakness and evil:

a quickening of the pulse,
the red bird of thought.

I learned drunkenness on altar
wine and how to hover above

myself, separate from my body.
I learned to transubstantiate

when in the presence of man,
learned by saints that chaste dead women

are preferable
to any woman alive.







TYPO 31