Marjorie Maddox

We beg you,mend the ways of pretend mendicants,imposters who pose pious and pitifulon our staked-out streets.Uncover the shades of the blindwho really see, the crippled who limpselectively in rich company.Competition is keen;let’s keep the neighborhood cleanof riff-raff and . . . . Continue Reading »

No cutie-pie cupid wings fluttering rings about the heart or head, no fancy frilly two-way arrows, or rose-colored alphabets shaped into vows; just a pretty trick of history, an early-spring wish when birds twittered about each other, and Roman schoolboys, for love of Juno, drew girls’ names to . . . . Continue Reading »

Maundy Thursday Daily dust over the jaggedstair steps of toes, between the crackedskin; heels bruised by heat,small toes stoned by cobblestone.The wrong one is kneeling,sprinkling water over the wounded,a stream of fingers cleaning disciples’ feetas boils and blisters burst with newcovenant balm . . . . Continue Reading »

Out of the mouths of Holy Innocents the wailings of our weakness, our Herod knees bent now the better to swallow the words we’ve wallowed in, the tug-and-pull of the womb across the clinic’s lintel. In Rama there is weeping, in Charleston, in Bismark, in Portland, in Trenton, in Pittsbugh, in . . . . Continue Reading »

by which we pacify with euphemism our planned transgressions, boundaries shifting convenience into correct countries is the language by which we pun on pleasure, pour into our mouths the here-and-now, an alphabet of aftertaste sour on our tongues is the two dead children alive again for the ten . . . . Continue Reading »

Fingernails scrubbed clean as latrines in the army, this symbol of a man dirties his thumb with our skin, the powdery ash riding high on his pores, not sinking in before he sketches the gray of our dirt-birth across a brow we were born to furrow. Listen to the sound of forgiveness: the crossing of . . . . Continue Reading »

I "Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning, burning, burning," we belted out on the Baptist church bus bound for Camp Born Again, refueled forever we knew for the faith with the oil of the holy. Hallelujah! II Through the cracked, creaky bedroom door of Aunt Martha's farmhouse, we watched the . . . . Continue Reading »