Ars Poetica

In the beginning, my mother and the gap
between her teeth. Fit two quarters.
I followed her: the secret house, the deep window
we watched into h***.

There every gesture formless,
a bitch returning to crate.

You are what you eat: I and my mother
ripped up bible pages and drank
them down like cyanide.

She says my first word
was juice. Say grape, say American communion
nightly before entering my toddler bed
and lying til the distant T.V. died.

I begged for divinity and called it Jesus.
Inside the prayer, I find the firmament
of fear. I carry

my machete, my hammer. I swing.

Olivia Rose was born and raised in San Jose. She is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at San Jose State University, where she earned the Alan Soldofsky Award for Outstanding MFA Thesis and served as Reed Magazine’s Senior Poetry Editor. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Red Coyote, The Ear, Westwind, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco.