Reading Flannery O’Connor While Trapped under the Heat Dome

by Devon Balwit

Angry and red, the writer’s sun bloodies 

her endings, a Divine spectator of Revelation,

her characters on their deathbed, on their knees,

self-conceit limp as a shroud, no question

about their status among the goats, about their want

of Grace, the final gunshot, the apoplexy

that sweeps their house clean, the Holy Spirit

entering and reclaiming them as God’s eye seethes

at the open window. How crushed they are,

yet their shattering releases something ineffable—

like the mortar and pestle the sharp scent of pepper

or the thumb and finger the freshness of lavender. Biddable

for the first time ever, they blush beneath the coal

of the darkening sky, shy naked souls.

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Devon Balwit walks in all weather. Her most recent collections are Rubbing Shoulders with the Greats (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020) and Dog-Walking in the Shadow of Pyongyang (Nixes Mate Books, 2021). For more of her poems and reviews, please visit https://pelapdx.wixsite.com/devonbalwitpoet.