reilly cox 

Communion

The daughter kneels by the father’s bedside with a sponge
soaked in whiskey. This is how the dying drink. To say,
Lord, give us this day our fermented grain and forgive us
for what comes next. To say, Lord, my father was not a bad man
but he did not always know how to be a good one. The daughter
kneels by the father’s bedside, surrounded by her brothers,
her older sister, and they raise their glasses. To say, We wet
our dirty paws in the dirty snow and hope—somehow—to find
that they have been cleaned. To say, Mother, what will you do
now? The daughter kneels by the father’s bedside in the light
of the seven windows while outside the heron stabs the canal
water and raises out of it a fish, who knows now something
that is not quite ecstasy. Meanwhile, the five senses begin
to fade out, like lightning bugs: sight; sound; smell; touch;
                                                                                               taste.

Reilly D. Cox is a MFA candidate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa where they serve as Design Editor for Black Warrior Review. They attended Washington College and the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. They have work available or forthcoming by the Academy of American Poets, Always Crashing, Cosmonauts Avenue, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere.