poetry by Katharine Diehl
Her Twelve Sacred Names
I wanted to give her twelve sacred names
To her, but first I’d have to name her-
And there, I can’t continue. I know she sings,
Roundelays and madrigals, with a star on her forehead,
I’d call her the voice heard in Ramah.
Her heart is in the white chalk hills and forests.
One for a vanishing people, sunk in her blood
And not banished. Scion of the tree of heaven.
How many other names? Because I never knew
I didn’t know her, besides as my mother,
I don’t know if “mother” is a sacred name, I don’t
Know how else to name her.
A prayer for one mad
I knew who I were, what I was.
Still they said ungood. Said addled.
Mad as Adam, mad as Eve.
Samara in myself. I went
Sober sober into the woods
And I waited there, hands folded. I kept
The devil’s hours turned till devil’s days.
Tending the Altar
First for Artemesian pleasure,
Your pen. The flowers you arranged
Continuing divestment
Until you came to the knowledge
Striated, with blood, hard-won.
But it was counted as a sacrifice.
Like Artemesian nacre
The kindness of honey,
The spirit which tends the fire.
The tree that bleeds for years
And finally char.
An Artemesian desire.
I wanted to give her twelve sacred names
To her, but first I’d have to name her-
And there, I can’t continue. I know she sings,
Roundelays and madrigals, with a star on her forehead,
I’d call her the voice heard in Ramah.
Her heart is in the white chalk hills and forests.
One for a vanishing people, sunk in her blood
And not banished. Scion of the tree of heaven.
How many other names? Because I never knew
I didn’t know her, besides as my mother,
I don’t know if “mother” is a sacred name, I don’t
Know how else to name her.
A prayer for one mad
I knew who I were, what I was.
Still they said ungood. Said addled.
Mad as Adam, mad as Eve.
Samara in myself. I went
Sober sober into the woods
And I waited there, hands folded. I kept
The devil’s hours turned till devil’s days.
Tending the Altar
First for Artemesian pleasure,
Your pen. The flowers you arranged
Continuing divestment
Until you came to the knowledge
Striated, with blood, hard-won.
But it was counted as a sacrifice.
Like Artemesian nacre
The kindness of honey,
The spirit which tends the fire.
The tree that bleeds for years
And finally char.
An Artemesian desire.
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Katharine Diehl lives in NJ and works in social science research. Her chapbook The Fourth Wave is available from Dancing Girl Press. Find her @KElizabetta.
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