Briana Ashley

It’s hot in this room.

A sweltering heat joins with the bellowing beat of a new drum; voices rising and slashing each other, ideas clashing and impassive fists of passions crashing down on tables owned by the idea of a nation, not owned under God.

Permanently put in ink that was written on me brought here from somewhere else. Visions and words so glorious you could almost taste but placed with urgency rather than haste upon me. Paltry parchment that wasn’t worth remembering until now, yet always for those who lived in home that they could scarce even call their own.

It’s this ragged yet perpetual youth. cholera domiciles worked from birch. a tree of life that the church itself could not have grown while a mother gently awakens from her slumber, hallelujah, gleams of day, a glowing on her green and growing breasts, the running wind, a berry patch, the laughing brook, and a briar thatch.

The watching osprey guards majestic sacred planes of sage and scrub and a wandering horse, carrying an awe struck rider who sees the jagged cliff, that cared for the callow calf and cub.

I tried to find this holy ground in the maples without the overreach of anyone.

Priestly or PayPal’d, that doesn’t mean the church didn’t have a say in it and had always meant to silently stay in it. That vocally Venmo’d venom because I know— sometimes it had its way with the direction of it.

I don’t think it’s dangerous to worship an idea.

Clouds spinning manic circles, for to crown this stormy palace and still every day the war ships float the spray and I’m still not sure whether it’s blood or salt— and if salt water, is it sweat or tears that rears the flood?

Either way, a ship can’t sail without a body of water.

So it takes the sons and daughters of those who stood on the brig with the pale, taxing to avoid sinking and to clean a deck, which is stinking, and yet it still throws back into the sea, a liquid to float without gloating.

it’s then, that I’m wet again.