Comfort-my-people obeyed, demanded respect.
Badge-bibled, gun-armed. Drank to forget.
Forgot his kevlar.
Dental ID needed. Daughter swore vengeance.
Cast-down-the-proud loved and raged,
Helpless-feeling, center-avoiding, Maltov-handed.
The necessary enemies arrived, fucked up her face, laughed:
“Weeping eyes for a bleeding heart.” Riots followed.
Ponder-in-her-heart came third: quiet, nerves of goddamned steel.
Blank-stared a man into dropping his shotgun;
Turned her back on a gang.
Ponder had no lover, no tribe beyond siblings (soon dead.)
Saw visions, chose childlessness.
For who, in faithless times, could endure a son’s early death, stone rolled upon grave?
Who now could trust in miracles?
This has been a part of Loren Eaton’s 2022 Advent Ghosts 100-word story contest.
Advent Ghosts 
Poetry! I think that’s a first. There’s a LOT going on in this one from the biblical references to the contemporary allusions. I’m going to need to ponder for a bit …
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Thanks! I’m still not sure why I kept the line breaks, except that somehow I felt it actually made it slightly clearer. The prose was so fragmentary already, a poem made more sense.
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Wow! Very deep and really cuts to the heart.
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Thanks!
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Well done. I really dig this. I don’t know if I GET it all, but I dig it.
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Thanks!
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As I woman, I absolutely love this. “Ponder-in-her-heart” reads to me as a feminist vibe many of us have around one of the world’s most famous women. What if we were never afraid, of men or the god they want us to obey? What if we owned our bodies entirely? What we see the writing on the wall and say no thank you? Brilliant. And for some people, a scary story!
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She’s definitely the one of the three siblings I most admire! I saw a bit more of a note of despair at the end with her, but I like your reading, too. I honestly was so keyed into the Mary archetype (“she pointed these things in her heart”), not to mention so worried about the future my own kids will insanity, that I didn’t actually think of the positive elements of choosing childlessness, of which there are baby! (Both inside and outside the Christian tradition; for example, Dorothy Day.) Either way, she seems one of those self contained folks who don’t care to worry about what others think our expect, but has the courage to chat a path in accordance with her own moral judgements.
So thanks for digging in and helping me to further find meaning in my sto
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Definitely despair. It’s the forced choice that’s not a choice in a way. Complex.
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As other people have said, plenty of things in the words; however, there’s also a most fine rhythm.
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Thanks!
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