Messenger: Bishopville, South Carolina 1998 Poem by Melissa Morphew

The morning waited—a sparrow in its egg, still and gray—
too early even for the work of dreams.
But something stirred, a twitch of muscle under skin,
as if they knew what was coming—broken glass, shattered sleep,

the tall woman on the front porch who would tell them “Jesus lives
in lithium sunshine, the splintered prisms of stained glass churches.
Everyone throws stones and the rainbow slivers
stigmata our hands and feet. Don’t you feel the sadness?
The way the world flutters—a frenzy of battered moths—desperate
to dissolve the windows, breathe-in the milkweed opiate of God.”

And the bits of glass upon their living room floor
made the pattern of a cross, the Star of David, a pentacle, a mandala,
if they had looked, if they had knelt down, placed their knees
upon the shards—but no one looked. The police came.

“Who are you? ” they asked.
“The dusty mildew of Lazarus.”
“Where do you live? ” they asked.
“On the cusp of heaven, in the edge of a falling star.”

She pointed toward the sky-each minute
ticked heavier with threat of rain—
such an unlikely angel in a plain denim skirt
and silk purple hat, white socks sheathing her arms from
fingertips to elbow. She used an orange juice bottle
to break the windows because “God devours oranges,
the honey-combed meat, the rice paper membrane,
the pith, the peel, the zest.”

And they could smell the sweetness on her tongue,
the message she must deliver—this Eden, this paradise,
a million million orange trees, blossoms full-throat, each petal
cartographed with anonymous rivers.