May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
I watched Rebel Without a Cause on TV late one college night when I learned …
He’d heard about a girl from Galilee,
who cried in bed and swore she had no rest
from hungry demons quarreling in her breast.
So he paid a visit. Crouching on one knee
and warding off her fractious family,
he asked each demon’s name. Sternly he blessed
the things in her which could not be expressed
without trembling. This was the therapy
she needed to traverse her own Red Sea.
The next day she slept late; she bathed and dressed
and offered to escort the quiet guest
down to the gate. Reaching the cedar tree,
she looked back, frightened—then heard him say, Come
and walked beside him to Jerusalem.
David Southward
David Southward grew up in southwest Florida and earned a PhD in English language and literature from Yale University. He teaches literature, film, and comics in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Southward’s poems have appeared most recently in POEM, Verse-Virtual, Stoneboat, Measure, and Unsplendid.