Sunday Schooled

By Emma Bolden

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Always a lady, lean
she licked the French-
tipped century, threw
the trash, threw the party,
threw the scored curve
of her wedding ring down
 
drained & shambled,
weeping as a metaphor
for fire scorched
by the forest for the trees
leaved & not one more
goddamn worded her liturgy
 
of firm hairspray, regrets being
nothing so much as a Valium
pilled in her lambswool,
sweating out humid as a green
gem, a secret in a slip
under the ragged hem of
 
voices in harmony, lace-
ladylike, demure & damned,
Batternburgs & bombs
fat finched into a sky
suckling its own gray trash.