Epiphany - Poem by Joanie Mackowski

 

EPIPHANY

A momentary rupture to the vision: 

the wavering limbs of a birch fashion

the fluttering hem of the deity’s garment,

the cooling cup of coffee the ocean the deity

waltzes across. This is enough—but sometimes

the deity’s heady ta-da coaxes the cherries

in our mental slot machine to line up, and

our brains summon flickering silver like

salmon spawning a river; the jury decides

in our favour, and we’re free to see, for now.

A flaw swells from the facets of a day, increasing

the day’s value; a freakish postage stamp mails

our envelope outside time; hairy, claw-like

magnolia buds bloom from bare branches;

and the deity pops up again like a girl from

a giant cake. O deity: you transfixing transgressor,

translating back and forth on the border

without a passport. Fleeing revolutions

of same-old simultaneous boredom and

boredom, we hoard epiphanies under the bed,

stuff them in jars and bury them in the backyard;

we cram our closet with sunrise; prop up our feet

and drink gallons of wow!; we visit the doctor

because all this is raising the blood’s levels of

c6h3(oh)2chohch2nhch3, the heart caught

in the deity’s hem and haw, the oh unfurling

from our chest like a bee from our cup of coffee,

an autochronous greeting: there. Who saw it?

 

Joanie V. Mackowski is an American poet. She has published three volumes of poetry, and her works have won multiple awards. She taught creative writing on the faculty of the English department of Cornell University.