by Lucinda Kempe
The bells of Saint Mary’s rang throughout the town; rang though it snowed like Joyce’s Dead; rang through the sloshing of the cars slowed by the weather; rang as the crows complained. They rang through the school yard where the pent-up kids pummeled each other; rang through the nursing homes as old Lady Farrar was hitting up Old Man Stahl; rang through the mother’s tears as she buried her first child; rang through the silent monastery; rang through the monks’ prayers. They rang back to Elizabethan gore; rang to Montezuma; rang to the Aztecs, the Conquistadors, rang through the Inquisition and circled forward again. They rang through the Jefferson Bible, rang so long and loud Jefferson came out and questioned God,
Are you angry because I excluded all the magic?
They rang until they became a soft pulse in the ears of sleeping dormice, dormice who didn’t care about churches and men and blood but only the whisperings of spring.
Lucinda Kempe’s work is forthcoming in Salvage (China Miéville editor), the Summerset Review, SoFloPoJo, Bull, Does It Have Pockets, Gooseberry Pie, New Flash Fiction Review, and Centaur, among places. An excerpt of her memoir was short listed for the Fish Memoir Prize in April 2021. She lives on Long Island where she exorcises with words.
