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Poetry

Hands Together Ghazal

(Manel and Sean)

“Seek mercy for eggs we scrambled in a youth/spent banging pots and pans together./For the telling of clumsy lies, our voices/cracking like pecans together.”

Sans God, what grief can we stand together?

If we don’t count footprints in sand together?

 

The good word on the street is you find God

only when you put those hands together

 

That it’s by the seeking that we find a shepherd

and become his lambs together.

 

To read those texts cover to cover,

we study for final exams together.

 

Purge ourselves of our belonging, repent

for sins, tie up those loose ends together.

 

That to complete the process of letting go

we must make no more plans together.

 

But to be born again is not the only way

to form holy clans together.

 

This open cage says be like birds, to make

feathers grow, so we can fan together.

 

Seek mercy for eggs we scrambled in a youth

spent banging pots and pans together.

 

For the telling of clumsy lies, our voices

cracking like pecans together.

 

Rewrite, relive, recount each breath

of childhood memories that ran together.

 

Sit at the table, free words from throats,

forgive, so we can finally stand together.

 

You’ll see, when heaven asks at the pearly gates

we’ll show them our wristbands together.

 

Finding horizon is a one-man task, Dad, it does no good to scan together.

I hear that death’s a one-way journey but we can’t take the minivan together.

 

Svetlana Litvinchuk is a poet and permaculture farmer who holds degrees from University of New Mexico. She is the author of a debut poetry chapbook, Only a Season, which was released with Bottlecap Features in 2024. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apple Valley Review, Sky Island Journal, Plant-Human Quarterly, ONE ART, Apocalypse Confidential, Union Spring Review, Longhouse Press, and elsewhere.

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