Beseech

by Margaret Marcum 

Imagine the light

with the purity of the lily,

glowing pearl in the cadence of the moon

beams. I close my eyes ashamed.

My parents shake their heads,

bowing to read between the holy sheets: their only solace

knowing that the worst is past and gone.

The sprung girl got out of bed and slipped on her

knit beanie and duck rain boots

quickly, before Grandma would be

wondering where she was. She bends

down to smooth her skirt and skips out

the door, watering the flower beds,

not, seeing a man in a black suit that looms behind

fields of daisies and poppies,

alike. The cosmic warrior aims her

bow and arrow of stars across the dark

night sky. She releases the trigger, it

streaks into the abyss of our soul,

hyenas in hysterics,

a little girl, hands folded, beseeches: mercy.

* * * * *

Margaret Marcum is currently a graduate student in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. She graduated with a B.A. (emphasis on poetry) from the University of Redlands, where she was a member of the Proudian Interdisciplinary Honors Program. Her literary interests include animal rights, healing the collective through personal narrative, vegan studies, and ecofeminism. Her poems previously appeared in Literary Veganism and Children, Churches, and Daddies.