To the Man Who Gave an Unnecessarily Long Testimonial at a Potluck I Mistakenly Agreed to Attend
By Stephanie Glazier
Listen. I won’t pretend to know how blood makes anything clean.
And if purity were an issue you were really concerned with,
probably, you wouldn’t smell like this.
We are outside and you are still taking up all the air.
Mister, I don’t know if belief saves us from anything.
I mean, isn’t this the worst of it?
But your daughter—Mary— sitting there on that blanket, looking at me with eyes as blue as a cloak I wore in a Christmas Pageant once—
If the holy spirit lives anywhere she’s in the hollow behind Mary’s knee, turning over on herself, waiting at the end of this tender line of thigh, for company.
I’d believe she’d save something—
I believe.
Say, me.
Stephanie Glazier is Assistant to the Director at the RCAH Center for Poetry at MSU. She received a BA in English from MSU in 2008 with a specialization in Women, Gender, and Social Justice. She is currently enrolled in the low-residency program in Creative Writing at Antioch University Los Angeles.
