Ruminate Magazine: Faith in Literature and Art

Regained, she walks forward, binds
her body in a burqa the color 
of clay whitewashed in dust. Her crossed
arms carve a deep V down her breast.
Studs like shiny tongues chirp
between the folds. She is
a slow mountain moving.

The shadow of her floats
behind the oval mesh veiling her
face. Flies bounce there,
dazzled by her sintered bronze
skin where a screened light
pecks her brow with slim beaks.

The lambent finches of her eyes
call out dimly, drowned by the trill
of two tongues slicing 
the sky like golden blades.

Penned in her womb,
unborn wings rack against
the pleats, the gird of wings
whose feathers have long ago

faded. When she reaches home
from market, she hangs her
shroud on a nail on the wall.
The cage, from a hook in the sky,
twists slowly in the din.

Lauren Schmidt’s work may be found or is forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Rattle, Nimrod, Audemus, Slab, and Ruminate, where her poem “The Unseasoned Earth” was a finalist for the 2008 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize. In 2009, Lauren’s poem “What I Learned from Birds” was a finalist for The Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Originally a New Jersey native, Lauren lives and teaches high school English and art history in Eugene, Oregon.