“ReverendMotherForklift” reads as a contemporary experimental poem that combines surrealism, religious grotesque, confessional poetry, and dark/gothic imagery. Its form and diction are deliberately fractured, producing something closer to a fever dream, incantation, or liturgical curse than a conventional narrative poem. The poem appears to dramatize the wrestling of religion, inheritance, guilt, motherhood, abandonment, and spiritual contamination. Rather than presenting a straightforward story, it builds an atmosphere of psychological and theological disorientation through rapid collisions of words and images. It is part of the narration character’s backstory in the “An Empty Cup of Doom” novella.
“REVERENDMOTHERFORKLIFT”
roman candle water torture
irish queer bait spirit quest
protestation confirmation
beleaguered berated blessed
another yet drew me to this
blasphemy beset my best
unable precana fable
scattered sunset in the west
whore of whores and house of harlots
hand grenades and heretics
ministry of motherfucking
sons of bitches witches tits
bible through a mirror blindly
make what of you want of it
mammon holy war and pant suits
that which soothes the widow’s wish
in the hills, a midnight altar
tea leaves, runes, and amulets
she laid the baby on the stone
and shriveled back in deep regret
a mother’s tears, a widows peak
fatherless untethered mess
the atom hearted prophetess
grants my weary soul no rest
so count the cost, inheritance
left to my designs, bereft
unclean bats feast on my prayers
demons dance and repossess
far off into the darkness blind
drifting windless unto death
and in the ditches and the bogs
glowing eyes that steal my breath
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