HER FATHER TALKS TO HER ABOUT SEX
If your right hand offends, chop it off,
throw it away. Better for you
to lose one part of yourself than
suffer your whole body to burn.
Throw it away. Better for you
to pluck out your eye. If you don’t
suffer, your whole body will burn.
Better to be blind. Better to starve.
Pluck out your eye. If you don’t,
think of Eve, naked and ashamed.
Better to be blind. Better to starve
than be exiled from your Father’s love.
Think of Eve, naked and ashamed.
Think of your runaway sister, forever
exiled from your father’s love.
Think of Delilah. Of Jezebel. Lot’s wife.
Think of your runaway sister, forever.
Think of those girls, opening their legs.
Think of Delilah. Of Jezebel. Lot’s wife.
Cut off your tongue. Cut out your heart.
Think of those girls, opening their legs.
Suffer. Your whole body burns.
Cut off your tongue. Cut out your heart.
Throw it away. Better for you.
—from Imago, Dei
2021 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner
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Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose: “I grew up in the Church, and by that I mean in a fundamentalist, evangelical home where we spent Sunday dinners debating things like the meaning of the Greek word ‘Baptismo,’ whether it meant you had to be fully immersed or whether a sprinkling was sufficient to keep you from the gates of hell. Because Jesus was ‘the word,’ and because I spent so much of my youth analyzing the ‘good word,’ it’s fitting that I wound up pursuing a degree in English and becoming a writer. Ironically, the close-reading skills the church taught me was what ultimately undid my faith. Thank God.” (web)
