by Kalyn Livernois
When the Bible’s God was born
he came from the center of a woman
grown in a landscape between the pump
of a steady heart and legs that were built
to run, a space in the middle
for him to slip out and float into mystery
living between the bounds of what the human
mind knows and a pushing at its periphery
I was born in the middle of a year
almost smack dab in the center
and when my name is called
I exist in the middle of the alphabet
I, too, came from the center
of a woman, grown in that marshland
with rhythmic pulse above
wandering limbs below
On a cold, clear night I stood
before Mary’s boy and told him
I understood, heard the steady thud
of his sacred heart and saw how he had
legs like mine; like our mothers’
then mouthed an apology
before running
Kalyn Livernois is an MFA candidate at New England College. She is a prose editor at Cobra Milk and the managing editor of Variant Literature‘s journal. Her work has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Dust Poetry Magazine, Stone of Madness Press, CP Quarterly, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. You can find her on Twitter @kalynroseanne.
Emerge Literary Journal 