A Bidding Prayer
by Suzanne Underwood Rhodes
Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is working on her second full-length collection of poems, to follow What a Light Thing, This Stone, and two chapbooks, Hungry Foxes and Weather of the House. She has recent work in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East, and the anthology Between Midnight and Dawn. She teaches poetry classes at the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia, and, with her husband Wayne Rhodes, a photographer, spends spare hours hiking outdoors where the birds are. suzannelrhodes@gmail.com
for all the lost eyes and limbs
wandering over there: the severed
head that made Herodias smile
and each head that darkly soaks the dust
but once nestled near a mother’s heart,
her luscious breasts promising
lasting, improbable love.
For Robert Hanna’s leg ripped with grapeshot
and his clumsy government-issue stand-in.
For soldiers like him blasted and sawn,
their parts misplaced in foreign lands.
For minds that never stop being killed.
For Van Gogh’s ear and his lost sanity
spilling into zinnias. For poets charged
with words and hung for words.
For the honeycomb child
dismembered from her dream,
and what of her golden, peddled parts?
For Grandfather’s index finger
tapping a tune over there.
For my missing breast, so lately fondled.
Over there, in the country of heaven,
is the Body most broken, most whole
carrying the sad, unbearable bones
until they’re all gathered home?
Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is working on her second full-length collection of poems, to follow What a Light Thing, This Stone, and two chapbooks, Hungry Foxes and Weather of the House. She has recent work in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East, and the anthology Between Midnight and Dawn. She teaches poetry classes at the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia, and, with her husband Wayne Rhodes, a photographer, spends spare hours hiking outdoors where the birds are. suzannelrhodes@gmail.com
for all the lost eyes and limbs
wandering over there: the severed
head that made Herodias smile
and each head that darkly soaks the dust
but once nestled near a mother’s heart,
her luscious breasts promising
lasting, improbable love.
For Robert Hanna’s leg ripped with grapeshot
and his clumsy government-issue stand-in.
For soldiers like him blasted and sawn,
their parts misplaced in foreign lands.
For minds that never stop being killed.
For Van Gogh’s ear and his lost sanity
spilling into zinnias. For poets charged
with words and hung for words.
For the honeycomb child
dismembered from her dream,
and what of her golden, peddled parts?
For Grandfather’s index finger
tapping a tune over there.
For my missing breast, so lately fondled.
Over there, in the country of heaven,
is the Body most broken, most whole
carrying the sad, unbearable bones
until they’re all gathered home?
