This is Serious
The woman at the tall table beside me
asks the small child on his stool,
…………….If there was a muffin god would you bow down in worship?
He’s listening but doesn’t get her tone
…………….(this is serious).
So, after asking several times in several ways
she finally delivers the commandment,
…………….I am the Lord thy God and thou
…………….shall not place false gods before me.
And I think of the cold dead hand of Charlton Heston.
But the boy is stuck on the original idea.
…………….If there was a muffin god he’d be my gramma.
He breaks the shining muffin top off its base and shows
her—I like this part best.
In Plaza de Torors, Cattafi writes,
The same stars/ as Arabia, meaning, we share them.
I sip my tea considering those stars—
feel the way Cataffi’s lark, in Moor, becomes Juliet’s
lark exploding morning out of night
wordless god-like—
The teacher turns a page in her Testament for Children
but the boy ignores her,
as if the muffin god has silenced her.
© Miriam O’Neal
Miriam O’Neal‘s work has appeared in AGNI, Blackbird Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, Ragazine, and many other journals. She is a 2019 Pushcart nominee and was a finalist in the 2019 Disquiet International Poetry Prize. The Body Dialogues (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2020), was nominated for a Massachusetts Center for the Book Award. A portion of her translation of Italian poet, Alda Merini’s, Rose Volanti appeared in On The Seawall, in Fall of 2019.
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