“Stardust” by Colette Tennant

Colette Tennant

STARDUST

I don’t like it when scientists call me a carbon-based life form
it makes me sound like a pencil smudge on my writing finger

a really bad child at Christmas
clumps left on the oven floor when an apple pie runs over

a suspect’s fingerprint
coal a million years from diamonds

an accidental piano key
mascara tears

a Goth kid’s hammer-smashed fingernails
an Ash Wednesday forehead every day

the leftover eyes of a slumped jack-o’-lantern
a snow pile in a Cleveland parking lot late March

a hurried tattoo
bathroom graffiti

an orphaned chimney sweep
a heap of autumn leaves, colors all burned to ash

from Rattle #45, Fall 2014
Tribute to Poets of Faith

__________

Colette Tennant: “I am a professing Christian, an imperfect but forgiven lover of Jesus, the dearest bread, the sweetest wine. I can find the Garden of Eden story in almost any piece of literature I teach. I like quoting what Francis Schaeffer replied when someone asked him what he would say if he had one hour to tell them about his faith. Schaeffer replied, ‘I’d listen for 59 minutes and talk for one.’”

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