She must not be like us. Tell us she ran
wolf-skinned through windstorms, strip her down
to a howl. Then the conversion.
Tell us she gave a drunk her coat
and stiffened to a statue overnight.
Tell us she sang hymns with her throat cut.
Tell us anything but that she told
small lies as we do, or rebelled
from time to time, or shivered in the cold.
Don’t tell us that she was a bit unhinged.
It isn’t hard to rearrange
the details. Tell us that she changed—
some little scruple most people outgrow
didn’t still haunt her in the twilight. No,
don’t tell us she was odd, don’t let her elbow
her way into the story with her hair
on fire, the stench of sinners everywhere,
spilling her questionable visions on the floor.
Make her domestic as a rose,
polite as tap water, safe as the corpus
on a dime-store crucifix. Make her like us.
Hilary Biehl’s poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Think, New Verse Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection, Giants Crossing (Kelsay), received the Poetry by the Sea Book Award. She lives in New Mexico.
