THE RAIN GOD

inspired by bessie head's "looking for a rain god." only one period, saved for the very end. try reading this aloud in one breath.

Straw dolls swing from the willow tree, children bathe in water once saved for drinking, lithe women bite their lips for color, the delinquents pay their dues and polish the stake, churchgoers in half-clean linens give a tenor’s hum, no hymns are sung on this day, no Fox and Geese out to play, Mason-Jar yeast boils on the windowsill, the Matriarch braids the hair of the mother, who braids for the daughter, who braids for her doll, Bessie, who mimics her owner in a peony cross-stitch gown, handmade, handmade like the yeast, like the Chapel near the starved spigot, like the wooden stake, like the crosses of Palm Sunday that hang on doors, like the flour-dusted rye this town once had, like the Deacon’s rosary beads, like the Deacon’s spiked, ebony club, nested in the sacristy, padded with the coffinmaker’s Duchess Satin, waiting to meet its wooden twin, the stake, who waits for the Rain God’s gift, who will right this land wronged with drought, who will repay the town for their offerings and sacrifices: rouge in tin pots, orange peels, ribbons on cowtails, roots from rosewood trees, the tongue of a fennec fox, a child’s first bloodied sheets, the stained soap bars that washed them, a patriarch’s broken pistol, a sterling silver ring from a more broken marriage, a baby’s first fallen tooth, a declaration sealed with candlewax and licked by the Deacon, sealing the fate of one first-born girl, tethering her at the stake, feeding her bows and laced socks and body to the Rain God, who will drink her girlblood, the Rain God, who will look to the tears streaming down the face of a woman who has outlived her daughter, the Rain God, who will decide that the mother’s tears shall suffice, and from the salted water pouring out from the mother’s eyes, this land shall drink.