Catherine Blake

I flush my paintbrush against the water bowl's sides.
A cloudy tail spirals up in its wake. For me,
each morning dawns to a disk of fire not unlike
a guinea, and this he will not forgive. My paper

glows out yellow like the sun rising and singing
to my husband: Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord God
Almighty! A swarm of angels crying to him,
he says, and though I try to see otherwise, it's just

the bees that have roosted in our eaves. The dry
husks of their bodies bat the windowpanes.
I dip my brush's tip and swirl it round
a lozenge of paint. Only here, in the window's

mirror-glare, do I see more than he:
white feathers spit from my lips instead of air,
sticking to me, a gutted pillow's snowy innards,
till I am waxed and feathered as any saint here.

Copyright © 2005 Rebecca Dunham All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission