The Pastor and His Reconciliation Death is giving a party in the fields. Our priests point out the spot in the tall weeds. They step forward in their white albs like lab coats, some days peaceful as doves. On black-cloak days they perch like fat crows on the altar. Those days, death is a punishment, and death’s party, a wake. Their sermons are true as harpoons to the guilty heart; then they wait in confessional boxes with their bandages, antiseptic, and laudanum chants. On the dove days they give you purity and unflagging, full-span hymns. You forget your invitation, neglect your rsvp. Your heart, like air in a fountain, rises up in white pearls to bate your breath.
Rose Bedrosian received her B.A. in Literature from UC Santa Barbara, where she edited Spectrum and won The Frank W. Coulter Prize. A winner of The Independent poetry competition, her work appears or is forthcoming in Verse-Virtual, San Pedro River Review, Beatnik Cowboy, and Pembroke Magazine, among others.
Amethyst Review 