Foldable Altar, by Jacqueline Berger

Posted on March 28, 2019

When the fisherman’s hand caught
as he flung his net into the dark water,
night fishing for herring,
he tumbled overboard
and didn’t know in the cold black
which direction was up and which
would drive him further into the deep.
The body is saline as the sea,
but our natural buoyancy apparently
no help in the tangle and panic,
the twisting of waves.

A shred of cloud saved him
and he swam to its scrap of light.
But sometimes the body fails.
A boy in shop class dove his arm
into the blades of the machine
to fetch a rag caught in its teeth.
Ever after he slung a shirt over
the shoulder of the missing limb,
its fabric like the flag
of a conquered nation.
Which brings to mind the girl
whose hips lifted to ease the job
of removing her pants for the one
who entered without knocking,
tumult of take and grab in the dark,
her screams as though underwater.

Unfold the panels like wings
and place on the altar a tiny hill of salt,
a small flame burning from an
oil wick—
elements of honor and forgiveness,
a row of nail clippings across a
velvet sky
and a nest made of hair
pulled from the brush signifying
what is lost, and lasts.

Jacqueline Berger’s fourth book, The Day You Miss Your Exit, was published by Broadstone Press last month. Previous books include The Gift That Arrives Broken, winner of the 2010 Autumn House Poetry Prize, and Things That Burn, selected by Mark Strand as the 2004 winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize. Her poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac. Individual poems have been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Halcyone (Summer 2018 issue), The Iowa Review, American Poetry: The Next Generation, On The Verge, Old Dominion Review, Rhino, River Styx, and Nimrod. She directed the Master of Arts in English program at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California and live in San Francisco.