Dishwater Madonna
by Terrence Flynn
Rosario Vasquez was eating a toaster pastry
She told the papers that the Holy Mother
The Virgin told me through her eyes.
I just got off my shift at the hospital. I'm a nurse.
She did not mention to the papers how the Mother
Or that she ate it
slack tide
A man traces the shape of his face
when the Holy Virgin rose from the dishwater.
told her the most lovely secret but never spoke.
They were flowing wheels of fire.
I was having a pastry and a glass of cold milk.
changed herself into the cool red fire of an apple.
and now walks
in both worlds.
in the waters of the sea.
He searches the flat liquid
for his legacy, although
he knows that both his mother
and his father grew up far to the interior
where long, sea-worthy oars
would pass unrecognized,
where mountains or hedgerows
shape the patterns of sunrise or sunset.
He looks at the shifting shadows
rising like fingers of nucleic acid
in the green water, knows the same salt
surges like an urge through his body
and knows it will soon break free
of his land-formed, land-locked vessel
and flow, like any good river
back into the sea.
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