In Search of a Container for Jesus This is how the talk of vessels starts, the ark that might be Mary. Or maybe it begins with the boat that, despite carrying literally the weight of the world, so easily moves on. How dreadful to be God's captain, turning away the splinket and the flomb just because she could claim no spouse. It's not just attachment but what's held inside, organic coffee in a cup, fresh bread brought home inside a brown paper bag. Somehow the theory holds up if you understand emptiness is not a random mental condition. You must believe God came to me in a dream and invited me for tea and biscuits, but it’s never just that. It’s about my body and what it could hold, the trash receptacle, the kitchen cabinet drawer. Everything has a place to go and every woman looks like an open jar, or so it is written.
Beth Oast Williams’ poetry has appeared in West Texas Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER Journal, Poetry South, Fjords Review, and Rattle’s Poets Respond, among others. Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.
Amethyst Review 