on how we are simply slabs of wretched marble. How God is the Sculptor.
How we must be ready for everything He must chisel away.
When we first came to this country, my father spent years

in front of his mirror, chiseling consonants, softening the stone
of his jaw, its new English like clay. And my mother? My mother got
all her words wrong. Spent months in an accent reduction class calling

the root of song, son, telling us to open the light instead of turn it on.
She says she wished she could’ve cut our biblical chords, not our father;
after all, she did all the work. She says it’s a doggy dog world but prefers cats.

She searches our hair for headlights and pulls whistles from our short shorts
after an afternoon of rolling around in the yard like cannibals. We drove to
McDonald’s and she cleaned the mustered muzzled around our chins.

We road our push bikes into pick-it fences and she pulls our wrangle
of limbs, smothers bombs, dabs blood off our glazed knees with her
only good white Church louse. She irons our pants, turns off the

Michael Jackson concert playing on the TV, swaps homonyms and homophones
and homophobes around. She tells us to beehive, and we are her obedient
bumblebees. She says we’ve ruined her dress, that she’s razed us better than this

and because of us, we are, look at the chimes, late for Church. We open
the doors and everyone swings around, watching until we sit in the pews
way back, as the Pasteur resumes his Sir, Ma’am to his fold of foals.

My mother cat-ears the pages of her Bible and underlines the verses
she doesn’t understand but likes the sound of. God’s coming,
and He’s got a hammer in His Hand. I never said He has a chisel.

The congregation listens with baited breath, school of fish for Christ.
On the drive home, my mum’s blasting the car radio so loud she doesn’t
hear her tyre (and sodom) bust until the car starts screeching like

something’s dying and she starts sobbing because we don’t have car assurance.
We step out, and she calls our father who is miles away, as if that’ll fix things.
Our blood on her dress shimmers in the sun like a jewel. A flock of arrows fly overhead.

She’s thinking of the parable Jesus said about worrying; something about
two copper coins and the field of lilies burned in ovens. And looking at us,
she says everything’s going to be all right. Maybe all of this is just a blessing in these skies.