Guest Author
Melissa Studdard - Writer, Poet, Professor, Editor and Tiferet Talk Show Host
Where the Gatekeeper Lives
Inside you, there’s a gatekeeper with
all the keys.
There’s
a summer morning
shaped like a woman’s throat.
There’s something you wanted
to say:
that to unlock suffering
is to acknowledge
death,
that death is the color of deep waters, of
miso
and seaweed, of eyes dilated by love.
Inside
you, a cactus
bursts with a thousand golden fruits.
The gatekeeper opens a lock,
peels a rind.
There are so many things you want
to do.
You’re a bloom of bones
and sacred blood. You’re the one whose sleep
throws itself into rivers,
waiting to be born,
the one whose fear scales mountains
when it could be picking locks.
Inside you, there’s a shipwreck,
and there are survivors
swimming towards the shore.
Inside you, there’s a gatekeeper
still trying
to open the doors.
Where the Gate Keeper Lives by Melissa Studdard - Copyright 2014
New poem, first published here on Saint Julian Press - January 2014