Skyler Osborne

SERMON

My body stood full
of blood at the Christmas pageant.
I spent the night awash in a man’s borrowed gown

years before anyone would
tell me the northern stars are dead
and will someday eat my family.

The next week, kicked in the chest by a mare
and held accountable in the frozen barn,
chained machinery leaking oil into my hair.

I did abide in my youth, pirouette toward sugar,
and joyride at night.
I fell through the elm, wore its limbs like a king.

Alone, I asked how to touch
the many mansions rising for me,
even if a fire was there to dim its jaws on the walls.

If I stared into the flat eyes of the fish
thrashing on the ice
before I tried to gut it, alone.

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Skyler Osborne received an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, TX. His work has most recently appeared in Best New Poets, Narrative, No Tokens, and elsewhere.