Congregation
Mara Adamitz Scrupe
it’s sanction in a penitents’ cutch inches
from absolution (a block of paper or parchment
between the leaves gold leaf is beaten)
it’s about gratitude/ no holes no tears/ thumbing
the edges of a paired cache: English creamware potsherd
Monacan quartz arrowhead: chipped/ still
sharp (side by side I dug them out from sticky red clay)
& it’s about generosity: the way a fighter is a survivor is tough
but a lover – embraced in the ring in a brawl where no one’s
the winner (the way a dust layer hovers as a loved one)
& I’m thinking about a tabloid story gone wrong & shouted
to the world in utter silence & a fake brass pillbox impressed
with filigreed flowers/ the lid fitted with mosaiced glass chip
roses in red & yellow & orange – bought from an estate sale with
my mother whose longstanding maxim: life’s not fair so don’t
expect it repeats in my head – alongside twenty-one
quarter leather bound hand marbled volumes (I can read the French
but don’t) I bought for their luscious leather library
bindings sewn fast with bast cord supports (my fingers beg
& cosset the bumps like rosary beads) things things
& more things & as we’re passing through a cloud
of Universal sputum – galactic debris – albeit it mildly
in this chapel my song is for the multitudes of anxious
possessions (only mouthing the words) attending to this service
as factotum an another odd job animal waiting
instruction & I’m feeling a little bit
saved waking up from one dream: driving at night
with no headlights or in another I’ve found a wallet
I think I’ll keep (thick with bills & mementos lists & notes
& somebody else’s name & number) & I’m considering praise
& prizes & deficits & paying for a dead person’s
possessions rifling through things things
& more things (heaped & stacked & dumped into a plastic
basket – I’m the only bidder for the whole lot) & I’m
thinking that fine & lush & abundant makes me more
than I was born & better too: I keep my meds in that pretty
little box alongside a single unpolished amber bead (cost me
a buck) & I’m thinking about art & the pecking order
& place & position & pedigree & class & how to define
possessions by necessity or excess
Mara Adamitz Scrupe
Mara Adamitz Scrupe is a poet and writer, visual artist, and documentary filmmaker. Her publications include five full poetry collections, and she has selections in generational anthologies by Southword/ Munster Literature, Aesthetica, Stony Thursday, and 64 Best Poets/ Black Mountain Press, and poems in key UK and US journals including Radar, Rhino, Tupelo, Cincinnati Review, The London Magazine, Mslexia, Magma, Abridged, and The Poetry Business/ Smith Doorstop. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, she has won or been shortlisted for significant literary awards including Arts University Bournemouth International Poetry Prize, Magma Pamphlet Publication Award, Gregory O’Donohugh International Poetry Prize, Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize and National Poetry Society UK. Mara is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and she serves as Dean and Professor Emerita, School of Art, University of the Arts Philadelphia. She resides with her husband on their farm in the Blue Ridge Piedmont countryside of Virginia.