where God crafts bodies,
I was made,
and am still, every
instantiation a choice
from infancy upwards. Adult selves
still get dreamed into being, their shifts
in size and wrinkle. When time to make
my body at thirty, God decides
to make me a vulnerability, a longing, a lie
expired. I know I am made to be
pressed here against my car,
on an empty street, with your hands on my chest.
To want to stay. Made new so I might step
out of my character, or as it were, further in.
I was made,
and am still, every
instantiation a choice
from infancy upwards. Adult selves
still get dreamed into being, their shifts
in size and wrinkle. When time to make
my body at thirty, God decides
to make me a vulnerability, a longing, a lie
expired. I know I am made to be
pressed here against my car,
on an empty street, with your hands on my chest.
To want to stay. Made new so I might step
out of my character, or as it were, further in.
Megan McDermott is a poet and Episcopal priest living in Massachusetts. In 2018, she graduated from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, an interdisciplinary program dedicated to religion and the arts. Her first full-length collection, Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems, was published in 2023 with Fernwood Press. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Woman as Communion (Game Over Books) and Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (Ethel Zine and Micro-Press). Her poems have been published in a variety of journals, including U.S. Catholic, UCity Review, Moist Poetry Journal, Night Heron Barks, and more.
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