POETRY

Burning Churches

By Dante Di Stefano     VOLUME 52.3


 WINNER OF THE 2019 AUBURN WITNESS POETRY PRIZE
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A man accused of setting fire to three predominantly black churches in a southern Louisiana parish was charged with hate crimes on Monday, adding to the three charges of arson that were filed last week.
                                                                                                                               —THE NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 16, 2019

The fire of Notre-Dame reminds us that our story never ends. And that we will always have challenges to overcome. What we believe to be indestructible can also be touched.
                                                                                                                                                     —EMMANUEL MACRON


Our Lady of Paris          our story never ends
it is burning      our story          and the structure
threatens imminent collapse       the very crown
of thorns is burning       along with the relics
of decapitated saints                  our story is burning

the sons of deputy sheriffs douse belfries
and vestibules with kerosene             they ignite
they tear down            the old rugged cross
they would light a noose and let it smolder        if
they could       they would immolate    hooded
still     they would        strange fruit and postcards
of corpses hanging from telephone poles            circa
whenever        during            all lives matter
during national poetry month            during lent
our story is rising       like sparks      like cinders
like a mouthful of ash at the tomb’s mouth
our story is a stone rolled away          a cave
a caved in       roof a skull                 the cerements
of the dead burst into a lotus flower ablaze
bless    curse    the accident     the arsonist     not
the fire licking the tabernacle door like a good dog

look at the flames dancing in the nave                  on
the west rose window            on transept             pillar
monstrance      reliquary        they are saying mass
these incendiary tongues         they are saying
the old story              we will endure this         no    
we will die        but even this end is a kind of rising


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DANTE DI STEFANO is the author of Ill Angels and Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in American Life in Poetry, Best American Poetry 2018, Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, the Sewanee Review, the Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. Along with María Isabel Álvarez, he co-edited the anthology Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America. He holds a Ph D in English Literature from Binghamton University and is the poetry editor for the DIALOGIST. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, Christina, their daughter, Luciana, and their dog, Sunny.


VOLUME 52.3