Here Is the Church, Here Is the Steeple Open the Doors and See Some People

Photo by John Cafazza on Unsplash

Gazing through the cage of my hands,

flesh in a cross-hatch, dividing

and turning open to reveal—

what? a room full of people

all the color of me?

There is no body more a body

than another: no one, none

to be sung about more, or wrong.

(But I was taught to sing).

We gather and we pray

through the cage of our origins,

flesh in its cross-hatch, dividing

and turning up to reveal

(and hide what is not) our skin.

These tides of feeling: hands

that are like my hands: a storm

that is like a storm, not feelings—

My flesh, like yours, abrades,

my arm that is like your arm.

Gather with me outside

the cage of our origins

with words that should be strange,

to be human is to be the same.

Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, Lisa Williams now lives and teaches in Danville, Kentucky. She has published three books of poems: The Hammered Dulcimer (1998); Woman Reading to the Sea (2008) and Gazelle in the House (2014). A recipient of the Barnard Women Poets Prize and the May Swenson Poetry Award, she is series editor for the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry and Prose Series, and a professor at Centre College.

(c) 2020 Lisa Williams