
nublaccsoul
The Night My Father Died, I Almost Believed in God
Megan Neville
funny how I grew up in a cold / house & now i’m scared of it all burning down /
flourishes of radiator heat block sunlight / gyrating shadows on the floor proving
anger is tangible / a temperature a thing a grabbing of flesh a gathering / of body
into one’s own / god reverberates between the tops & bottoms of echoes / do you
hear me god / is in the echoes / oh / my father feared going to sleep because he
might not wake & / then he did so he didn’t / now he’s up /on the mantle charred
crumbs in a vase / walking by i say hello or does it sound more like help / everything
in its place matter holding space / cradling us in unseen swaths / gone / the word
ignites behind my tongue before it / can escape i navigate between ghost / shapes
blocking my way / lean into the heat / into the heat / in heat / i eat / ie / i find
dimension in the sound / weave my fingers throughout / press it to my breastbone
/ atonement is his i / gave it away said here i don’t need it / need it / it / iterations
of i love you unfamiliar like this heat saturate this / room as bent knuckles / melt
into waves of / faith of f/aith / of faith
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Megan Neville is a writer and educator based in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of the chapbook Rust Belt Love Song (Game Over Books, 2019), and her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets (Poets.org), Pleiades, Cherry Tree, Cream City Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Boiler, McSweeney’s, Lunch Ticket, West Branch, and elsewhere. She is a poetry reader for Split Lip Magazine, and was a finalist in Write Bloody’s 2019 book contest. Find her on Twitter @MegNev.