Lord, teach me to bridle my tongue
        —Psalm 141:3


you don’t tell your father what you know of his father
though he has held this truth since long before your infant cries
taught him to make a cradle of his arms—

what would you even say? I cannot go with you
to your father’s house    daddy your father

has been the shadow pressing at the necks
of far too many women
think of your sister        it is a choice

to bridle the tongue     to play the saint
the peacemaker      pray you aren’t blessed for it—

for kissing the shadow’s gray cheek      for your weakness
for your father’s sake     for all that you know kneel
before the silenced women and beg—

be forgiven be cursed















your father says grandpa stopped coming for christmas because of you
it is not an accusation but rather a statement of fact

I kept my father away from our home because he makes you
uncomfortable      it’s been five years since the fracture and this is the first
you and your father ever speak of it     you want this to be enough

but it is not I kept my father from our home
because he is a child molester or I believe my sister
so how can it be—

two winters ago     on the way home from gambling
at Indian casinos and calling it charity    somewhere in fire country
where the mountains slope steeper than a girl’s strangled scream

and the wind slips through dry grass with the hush of prayer
daddy suggests you drop by his father’s house
because it is on the way     because you haven’t seen him in years

because what reason could you have to stay away for so long anyway
your mother agrees   and your silence is consent

grandpa’s house is red and innocent as a barn with lemons growing in the yard
he offers to pick some for you and you let him       he smiles
and you make yourself amenable     flash your teeth

as if everything were well     you can never outlive this
just as you cannot deny the subtext of your father’s words
the plea in them deft as the undercurrent of a river you thrash

about in panic as if you’d never learned to swim
as if this were the origin of the saying—blood
is thicker—taste the iron in your cheeks and hear him

I kept my father from our home because I’m afraid
you may divorce me too   you will never divorce your father
just as he will never divorce his

whatever your father’s sins they remain within the limits of grace—
you try to explain this to him but somewhere in Memphis
a congregation is celebrating the sins of their pastor

his little sexual incident with a teenager—

trip away from the path of righteousness—
even at this distance you cannot help but hear the roar

of the saints     let he who is without sin
cast the first stone     let the mouths of children and children grown
to women and children grown to men be filled

to the brim with uncast rock
their teeth ground down from the friction
their throats sealed off      suffocated

you are trying to clear the stone
to feel its weight at the center of your palm

to pull back your arm and let it fly like a bullet towards the skull
of Goliath or an arrow into the heart of what hurts you—

you are trying to let it fly as if its target
was not the flesh of a man you too had grown up loving















from above reality must look like the ocean rushing in
to thrash to flood to drag you bodily down—
your grandmother tells you she wishes

she could’ve gone to the local pastor’s funeral
but you can only witness the men who lost their youth
beneath the hands of the father

you hope they are relieved by his death
want to believe a person can be released
from the worst of their life    as an animal can scrape

dead skin against the bark of a tree
and be loosed from it    if only it were so simple
if only we could carry the memory of what was stolen

like a second heavier skin to be shed at the end of winter
is it always winter?

your grandmother says auntie ought to give up dysfunction
and move on     as if it’s that easy
when you are not careful you too find yourself

searching for a way out into delusion    as if it could sustain you
walk too far on those sands and they will swallow you

there must be limits to grace no matter how desperately you pray
that there aren’t   peace is never priceless nor easy   remember that

remember when your grandmother told you the story of Philip Bliss
how God took everything and he still declared it well—

how you worried you’d never walk in that kind of grace
you are too much discontent   you will always feel the winds whipping the waves

the water burning in your chest—don’t resist it
pray there is freedom for auntie in the flutter of truth falling

from her lips like rain    pray for flood    pray grace is strength
to speak when everything says be silent     let her never speak alone

say it too—it is not well—it is not well
it is not well    find your peace    but find your peace here