Poetry: Selections from Emmie Christie

He Calls Himself Evangel

 

I have encountered Conquest,

A herald seraphim -

A harbinger of sacred fervor

Wrapped all up in righteous sins –

He said he’s here to help us,

To save our precious souls,

But I detected many skulls

Under all that grinning skin.

 

He’s stolen many lives

(All in the name of fire),

In that apex of desire

That he ignites inside the breast.

He called himself Evangel, and

Yet his gospel reeked of brimstone

And I knew him as Conquest,

As He Who Must Possess.

 

I must confess, he almost tricked me

With how he shone so bright –

How I wanted him to save me,

To hold me in his burning arms!

But the redness of his light did warn me,

And I leapt back just in time

Before he could turn me

Into ashes with his charms.

 

I have escaped from Conquest,

That fiend with angel’s skin

Like a tide shrouding a shore.

Heed me, do not pray to passion,

Or you’ll fall prey to his war!

Pray instead to peaceful gods,

To They Who Don’t Control,

And he will have no power,

He will not confound your soul.

Wrath, Unapologetically

 

When a misogyny of men catcalls her

telling her to smile,

she obliges and flashes her fangs.

They scatter, but

she has dragons in her eyes

and fire in her lips,

she slices their dicks

with a flick of her sharpened

self-esteem. She feeds

on their fear, and now they know

she is carnivorous.

Now they know

she is the murmuration

of a collective, synchronized wrath,

she is made

from the microaggressions

of a thousand unsolicited erections,

the evolutionary apex

of all those who came before,

who cooked and cleaned and raised

the next generation of oppression,

she is the ascension of discretion -

wrath, unapologetically -

and she is all our futures,

should we decide to set her free.

Losing Belief

 

I’m losing belief in what used to be fact,

what used to be immutable, unmovable law,

like finding out gravity is a sham,

and up the apple tree I fall.

When religion rivaled Newton

and holding up my hands equaled proof,

bowing my head was a confirmation,

easy and simple, leading to truth.

Losing belief holds a special heartbreak,

it’s the loss of a childhood and the filter of fathers,

no longer seeing dimly, seeing the fake,

I’m liberal if I try to give out some water,

while they go on about Living Water, they’re blind,

they don’t see the foreigner, the cardboard signs

they don’t see the fourteen-year-old child,

they only see the child inside her.

They say, ‘give hope to the world,’

but then they shout, and they shame and destroy her,  

and they don’t even know her.

I’m losing belief in proclamations,

when they turn to whisper behind their hands.

Hard to believe it’s the fault of Satan,

when these people of God mock the pain of the broken,

of those who live on stamps and not on stocks.

It’s hard to believe that they believe what they say,

when property seems more important than, say,

a life of someone with midnight skin,

or the life of someone in transition,

or the life of anyone who’s not like them,

anyone’s shoes they haven’t walked in,

anyone’s tragedy they haven’t trudged in.

Like how homelessness begets itself,

like how medical bills steal all hope of help,

I’m losing belief in those that say, “God is good,”

and then sneer at the ones God hasn’t been good to,

at the ones slipping through the cracks

like it’s their fault they haven’t been blessed—

no rest. I’m losing sleep,

I’m losing grip on my belief,

though I hold tight to the Word that says,

visit the prisoners, and be kind to the foreigner,

this law stays true, though the people get colder.

The Type of Tea That Stays

 

Something about tea with honey, that soothing coat

layered over a raw throat, with tones of apricot,

they didn’t know they needed such a balm

until the barista smiled.

They are a thermos, all they want

is to hold this warmth inside themselves

throughout the freezing days,

for when the lady walking her dog

casts her chilling gaze over their squared jaw

paired with heels, for when the hiring manager

narrows his discretion at the same time as his eyes,

and their sob scrapes over their throat.

When they can’t get through the day,

and they might not get through the day,

not without another try at another note to say

what they might do just to escape the grating,

the grinding down of presenting.

That is when they call to mind that restful time

when the barista handed them a drop

of kindness in a cup, an elixir of honey and apricot,

and the ingredients of that smile!

Something about tea with honey

warmed through their soul,

soothing the abrasions in their throat.

The memory stays with them even now,

still warm—that someone saw and accepted them

not just as presenting—but as present,

as taking their rightful place in the current,

getting them through another day

with the type of tea that stays and stays.

Emmie Christie’s work includes practical subjects, like feminism and mental health, and speculative subjects, like unicorns and affordable healthcare. She has been published in various short story markets including Daily Science Fiction, Infinite Worlds Magazine, and Flash Fiction Online. She graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2013.