Two Poems
Kimberly Gibson-Tran
The Lesser Light
In the dark, a little light collects at the bones,
a hand-hold in the clavicle groove
where tattoos climb like a ghost scripture.
Once upon a time the name of God was a breath.
In this way we could be praying,
pouring the spirit into each other’s mouths.
Now only the sound of the ocean satisfies,
the suck of the shore. Under that lesser light
we are left with what we can get
from each other. None of our lusts will sate.
Whichever way we fly is a room
in some crueler imagination.
When we still, a beam catches the rough feathers
of a clay bird perched on the sill. I made it
by pinching two bowls and scoring them together.
What about the hollow I left, the sealed beak, the fire—
Why, with everything I knew, did I ever give it wings?
Deliverance
The air undrinks the rain, drenches the afternoon.
The air is milked with rain, it dews the skin, and the trees
drape their stems like the long necks of bible-women
washing hair. But you’ve been there before, you've seen
the chickens hunch into their dinosaur bones,
how the pigs grunt muddily for comfort.
Under the same power, the brown cows uncurl
their long ears and kneel down.
Missionaries in an upper room are opening windows.
A baptism gathers in the invisible tips of clouds.
Fiery, their prayers tongue down, close to a truth
in this deluge in this barn, sparkling,
deep in the damp ring of the mountains. The trees
weep into our footprints. They were promised good news.
After you are born, there’s so much left to do.
Kimberly Gibson-Tran studied linguistics and creative writing at Baylor and the University of North Texas. She's written critically about poems with Lines by Someone Else and has recently written in Anodyne Magazine, Passengers Journal, Elysium Review, and The Common Language Project. Raised in Thailand, she now lives in Princeton, Texas.