Staci Halt
Staci Halt's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Salamander Magazine, december Magazine, Rattle, The Los Angeles Review, Action/Spectacle, and others. She is mom to six rad humans and a slew of cats, and teaches and writes near Boston, for now.
God and Everybody
I waded into a field like it was a body
of water / The field wasn’t mine / it belonged to a cousin /
I was twelve / It wasn’t my body / That belonged to Jesus / The field
wasn’t my cousin’s / It was the man’s / the one who watched us / The grass
grew past my belly / I parted sharp blades with my arms as graceful
as Moses / My cousin’s face was sharp like a blade / The man gazed at
two girls as we swam through a field / Earlier I leaned against the fence
to catch my breath / woke a hundred years later it felt / Electrified
to keep the cows in and predators out / the man urged us
further into the field / Everywhere a sea
of blades / Cousin told me everything
was fine / Up ahead calves born last week / The grass cut my calves
/ A velvety baby with eyes like a puppy approached / pawed me / I learned
later that man was pawing my cousin / and worse / the girl who said it’s okay
It will be all right / But she hadn’t been all right / Everyone knew
eventually that she wasn’t all right / But before I knew /
as far as I could see / grass
the sky a blue you could hardly stand to look at / the brown calf lowing
for its mother / The man said give the calf your fingers / When it opened
its mouth I fed my fingers in and the calf suckled / I lowered
to the ground / The calf folded itself into my lap / I said this one likes me
and for a moment / I thought I could keep it
safe / I did not see the snake / hear the rattle / until the man struck /
with the butt of his gun / severed the fanged head / Cousin said stop
crying / it’s alright / It was there in the grass in full day light /
with God watching and everybody right there
/ not suspecting anything
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Image by Marisa Harris from Unsplash+
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