Day 7 poetry prompt from Poetry Super Highway reads:  Find the book closest to your immediate location. Open to page 45. Go to the fourth sentence on the page. The first six words are the first line of your poem.
GO!  Submitted by Emily Vieweg.

I’ve had a book on my desk awhile, waiting for mye to write some ancestor poems, and that is my source text. The first six words of sentence 4, page 45: Religious prejudice also survived, although less
The source: Life Below Stairs in the 20th Century, Pamela Horn, 2001, 2003 Sutton Publishing

So, religion can be a difficult subject at the best of times. I just let the words take me where they wanted to go. When I found myself writing less formally, I made a couple of edits to the first few lines but other than that, first draft here.

Old Timey Snake Gods

Religious prejudice has also survived, although less
commonly among carnivores. Cats tolerate a lot
long as they got a warm spot to curl them tails around.
Consider theyselves top deities anyways.
’Specially them blue-eyed Siamese—
when they’s not actin’ like pups.

Dogs still howl at the same moon as mother coyote
and brother wolf. Get enough of ‘em together,
they’d holler the silver lady right down to Earth.

It’s the Animalia chordata, the reptilians. They’re
bad for it, still pointin’ their forked tongues, still the hiss and
gossip about the fallin’-out from the Garden of Eden.

Snakes. Not like us. You look at ‘em sideways and
they does their own sidewindin’ dance. Or squeezin’ the life outta
some poor little rat not quick enough leavin’ the nest.

One night I seed ‘em all wound round each other
hissin’ and a windin’, lordy, lordy, make yer blood
run cold as their own.

I betcha when we ain’t lookin’, they’s walkin’ around
tall on their rattles and wearin’ some fancy snake-god clothes.
I prayed on it the once, but nothin’s changed much. We still got
snakes hereabouts. Windin’ and a hissin’. Watch yer step out here.

Carol A. Stephen
April 7, 2015




Snakes Black (Photo credit: Wikipedia)