2 September 2004 | Vol. 4, No. 3
from West Pullman
Father Latta held a quarter
in one of his two closed hands.
Which hand? He was quietly telling
jokes to pictures of dead pastors
in the rectory lobby
when summoned again
to soothe the heart
of Sister Elizabeth, raging
against the drum of her own
clamped fist. They leaned together
and murmured in Latin,
calling not on memory,
but words that have become
like breath. She tells him
that in the fertile mountains
of Poland where she walked
as a girl, she would one day
have met Mary and told her…
but this—she swept her silent
hand around—is no place for a vision.
Father Latta fingered the quarter
and asked: So God
has forsaken West Pullman?
Old Sister Elizabeth snapped
back to herself and they laughed.
About the author:
Carolyn Guinzio is the author of Quarry (Fall 2008, Free Verse Editions, Parlor Press), and West Pullman (Bordighera, 2005), winner of the Bordighera Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Cannibal, Colorado Review, New American Writing, Typo, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from Bard College and lives in Fayetteville, AR.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Carolyn Guinzio at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 4, No. 3, where "from West Pullman" ran on September 2, 2004. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
