A Poem by Jessica Goodfellow

Unholy Triptych

i.

here is my faith

here is my reason

one bucket with a hole in it

one without a handle

how to carry my life

to where it needs to go

without losing anything

not memory

not hope

ii.

here is my feeling

here is my thinking

one a barbed wire basilica

one a papier-mâché pagoda

in the rain

one rusts

the other melts

homeless is my lucidity

roofless is my light

iii.

dear credo

dear cranium

here is my reason

here is my faith

someone says

shadow box

and one thinks: diorama, an

entire tiny world

the other:

to practice punching at nothing

Jessica Goodfellow’s books are Whiteout, Mendeleev’s Mandala, and The Insomniac’s Weather Report. Her work has appeared in Best New Poets, Verse Daily, Motionpoems, and on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac.

The Poetry Section is edited by Mark Bibbins.