Counting Blessings Bella Koschalk

Counting Blessings

By Bella Koschalk

Pulpit

Anatomy of the third gender: dead swallow on the porch watching me falter at the wedding of thunder and sun.

I am a student of the swallow’s shallow neck wound, whose lessons tighten this corset of girlhood. Swallow, your beak is the staircase to the altar where I am bared. Reverence, hand me the needle. Humility, cross-stitch my thighs like little answers.

Another Winged G-d

The swallow’s slit throat is a strict master, but so is the rest of the flock; from the landing: a sinister perch, basking in the softness of blasphemy. The bird that dies in the hands of man asks me to become her g-d, but I learn I am falling all the time. Once in church: play dead. A body eating a body beneath that apocalyptic organ. I play nails through my wrists in church, g-d is guillotining all the girls; How do I parse such barbarics?

Waxing Over

So how do I parse such barbarics? Candle to beak, a final romance where I am ritual’s hands. This Sunday, I scraped the salt and grease from the swallow’s new wings. With the fat and stink under my nails I serve a patient corpse. Are these acts holy? What did I learn as the student of the swallow’s shallow neck wound?