Amy Coppe

Immolation

It would be a lie to pretend it’s simple devotion
That drives my lips to utter
“Take my life”

You said it best: those who love their lives will lose
Them, while losers like me
Take the proverbial cake

I’m not just imbibing principle, either, tipsy with
The evangelical fast crowd, ice shrinking as it
Takes the heat

Pragmatism fells me to my face; I know
I can’t make it without you
Taking away this filth

And I know from drawing near: unseen
Impurities combust, burn and scar
Holiness is a blinding white heat

Retaining Wall

One emerges, one day, blinking in garden sunlight:
What had been a retaining wall now

Retaining no form, function: Stone upon stone
Piled without order.

It is this way with lives. One day, truth emerges,
Light shafts through stubborn blinds

Intruding upon the idiot fictions,
Stone idols of the heart, showing

Trust to be a bankrupt temple,
Sullied structure: nothing to place one’s weight on.

What wall what wall will retain
This wail this wail at betrayal

After the March for Life

I don’t find it easy to be;
Open eyes shipwreck trust.
Plans of the ax-wielders to
Lay order waste, collapse
Homes to driftwood, siphon away
The weakest and dismember
Tender beauty in bloodthirsty
Rebellion against life and its
Lovers, are plain as street signs.
For linking arms, igniting bowls of
Incense, and raising to the King
This boundless grief and calls for
Merciful justice; for standing fast
Against the rot and ruin they force on
the undiscerning, they despise. I
Don’t find it easy to be, loving those
Who hate that I am found in You,
Incurring their condescending wrath and
Hearing with my conch shell ears only
Simple rushes of Your silence.