What If the Story Does Not End? by Lynn Domina

Somewhere in a second story
apartment above a bakery or antique store,
a shard of light
illuminates three verses from the apocryphal
Book of Judith. Yesterday, a young woman
paused in her reading exactly

where Judith raised the head,
clutching his dark hair, his beard
dripping to her elbow. She, the reader,
might have fiddled with her own
red curls or scratched the fold
of her left ear or rubbed her itching eye
before pouring herself
her last coffee. She might
walk dogs for a living or study
finite mathematics or arrange wedding bouquets.

She does not ordinarily meditate
on murder, the particular
standpoints of justice.
The story she reads might
or might not be true. It might or might not
be sacred. A woman
seduced a general and then
beheaded him. She’d never seen
such dark blood. A woman saved
her people, brandishing his blanched face
before them. The reader
paused, saving
the end of her story
for a later day. 

Lynn Domina is the author of three collections of poetry, Inland Sea, Framed in Silence, and Corporal Works. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Lake Effect, Moon City Review, About Place, Ninth Letter, and many other periodicals and anthologies. She teaches English at Northern Michigan University and lives in Marquette, Michigan, along the beautiful shores of Lake Superior. Read more here: www.lynndomina.com. 

9 September 2024