Back to issue one
Contributors' notes
Nell Maiden
Field Trip
"Unless you know where it is, you'll never get there."
--Member of The Holiness Church of God in Jesus' Name, Newport, Tennessee
Serpentine, this unpaved road and our purpose:
to watch a worship we're too educated to understand.
One caged copperhead still outside.
The man who caught it says, "It's a good 'un...
a mean 'un." The church hot with its hold
of September heat, off-key with guitars
and tambourines. Its brothers and sisters
waiting to drink poison, to place their hands
in flame and with those same charged hands
lift up a snake and give it purchase
on arms, shoulders, heads.
Our fear that someone won't--or will--
be anointed, our pens, notebooks,
cameras ready but not believing.
This man who can't sign his name
not hoping--knowing--
his brain pulsing alpha waves
as he takes up one,
then another,
and passes them along--
a disturbance regime, redemptive
as flood or fire, the man going home
to refuse her biscuits,
her touch, to wander the night
through dry and dying woods.
