Tuesday poem #236 : Jennifer Zilm : Devotional

My icon-bearing wall, the paint lightfast,

refusing the sun’s sleazy degradation.
Egg tempera is preferable to watercolour
because the leftover white can be used to
tighten widening pores or as scramble
for brunch after matinal devotions.
We who eat our god prefer our worship
objects with an edible sheen.

Out of the church, away from my altar, I find myself
praying to electric lights, to nostalgia,
to steam, the gentled railway tracks,
feast of freighter colour, power of
placement, oh our sweet lady of basic
bitch variations. I drink coffee only
at cafes where beans are locally roasted,
like Joan of Arc. On a bus shelter
I saw a sign: Someone took my brother—
I mean—my bicycle, I must learn how
to identify an emergency.

Jennifer Zilm is the author of Waiting Room (BookThug, 2016) and the chapbooks The whole and broken yellows (Frog Hollow, 2013) and October Notebook (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). A second collection The Missing Field is forthcoming from Guernica Editions in 2018. She lives in East Vancouver where she works in libraries, archives, social housing and harm reduction.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan