Hannah Craig | Baptism | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Hannah Craig lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is the author of This History that Just Happened (Parlor Press, 2017). Her work has recently appeared in journals like The Mid-American Review, North American Review, and Copper Nickel. She was the winner of the 2015 New Measure Poetry Prize and the 2016 Mississippi Review Poetry Prize.

Also by Hannah Craig: This History that Just Happened The High School Principal Writes a Poem to the Softball Team Now Taking the Field Two Poems

April 2017

Hannah Cohen

Baptism

I was not who I was. O and you were not. This is not something you would do. Those were demons flying through the house all night, hanging huge-eyed in the walls. The water, when you held us down in it, to baptize us, it did not know how to do anything to resist the body. It made a noose to catch us up. That is not something you believe in now. You did not think it would hurt us so much. You did not know. He told you to marry him and you said you would. I was lying to you. The spoons were wooden & danced. The hands were fast and they pinched when they caught us. Later, in the woods, you said nothing to me. Family is a rope you draw around yourself before you fly. I mean. The mow where we kept the hay was so clean & faraway. I see it now. We hid and the sun went down. We hid until he came home and said he would beat us if we didn't get inside. The angels were after us, too. They called & rebuked whatever lived inside, a green-black bug, a shiny tug in the gut. That's the wrong kind of shirt for a girl to wear. The buttons are on the wrong side. That's the wrong kind of stick to gather for firewood. That's the wrong way to kiss. That's the wrong kind of math, an old math, a dodgy, detrimental multiplication. First faith then family then shoes. I mean first art then money. I mean drowning is all we know how to do right and still we won't do it.

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