Atlanta Black

Lullaby on Mount Moriah by Traci Brimhall

The lullaby I wrote on your throat about the stained
hilt of the knife in my hand begins — Whisper, or snow
will come and make its sadness famous in your mouth.

The why of you a radiant devilfish, the what of you
a fat little soul bluing at the edges.

The surest way to receive a free ram is to tie your son’s hands
behind his back. Offer me a metaphor, God said.
Abraham stretched Isaac out on a rock, Like this?

Don’t be impatient with the gift. It will bleed out in the time
it takes shadows and atoms to inch their way between stars.

Every fire thinks it’s a part of God, but lightning
is not a promise, a flag is not a shield. Love wants you
to believe that there’s a God somewhere who can

do your dying for you. There are raptures that won’t
come for you and raptures that will.

In between, satellites blink the news to the lights in our hands.
Love will teach you many things, most of them tragic—

like last last kisses and letters under your windshield wipers,
like helplessness, like the man on the news weeping
and carrying what remains of his son in a plastic bag.

And Abraham said, This is how much I love you, and measured
Isaac from ankle to scalp. Love will gut you and then ask

you to carry on singing with light on your tongue
as a father finds flies crowning his son’s dreamless head,
lambent as the hand of God ushering a late ram from the bushes.

from Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod pg. 6