Melissa Crowe
At the bible camp there were horses, massive hay-smelling beasts
I couldn't ride without the fiver for the upcharge. At the horse camp,
lo, there were bibles, free, green leatherette with uncracked
spines and I'd soon cracked mine, with a marker lit each begat,
every revelation, then held the wild thing closed during night church,
touching its sticker, wiggle-eyed lion with a speech bubble
that read, I'm a King's kid. Afterward in the deeper dark of the cabin,
crowded with three-story bunks, so many girls praying then asleep
above me, I wrote on myself with my finger, When I wake, I will be
satisfied, but next morning stood longing in the sawdust of the barn
where the horses ambled out of reach and perched in every saddle
a girl with bare legs and boots, straddling. Later when Pastor Steve
in his cowboy hat and pearl-button shirt waved the good book
and said, Raise your hand if you haven't yet been saved, my arm shot up
though I'd been saved and saved: year before at Calvary Baptist,
year before that at Vacation Bible School where I'd won a golden
lapel pin—Jesus Loves Me—for memorizing more psalms
than anybody: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. Our bodies
cling to the ground. Still I climbed the steps to join him on the stage,
say yes again to God. I'd be a King's kid, goddamnit, confess
enough times to finally make it stick, feel the grace I glimpsed
on the pastor's scrubbed-clean face. I will not violate my covenant
or alter what my lips have said. At the bible camp, at the horse camp,
breath huffed from velvet snouts rose, and, lo, sweet breath from girls'
slack mouths gathered at the ridge beam and maybe slipped through.
My breath, too. Sure as I pressed hot hands together, asked the silence
for what on waking nights I think I still might want: to be lifted
from my life by some animal bigger than me. Possessed of lungs, wet
eyes, silken flanks, I burn. Lowing, lo—feet in sawdust, head upturned.