Donkey Lady Bridge
She had been beautiful,
walked barefoot through morning mist,
had hair the color of river silt,
eyes like creek water after it rains.
Her children laughed like sparrows,
her house smelled of bread,
the light through her windows
was golden and kind.
The fire took all of it.
Thick smoke robbed the air,
embers leaped to catch eaves,
walls groaned, blackened,
caved in.
Only she emerged—
skin peeled like bark,
arms twisted and gnarled,
legs bent like the limbs
of a dead pecan tree.
Her face remade, stretched
and roughened,
the bridge of her nose pulled forward,
her lips torn back.
Children taunted her with shrieks,
stones that stung and bruised,
pebbles striking torn skin,
patches of coarse hair.
Beast! Witch! Bitch!
Their mothers pulled them away,
hissed warnings to stay
on lighted streets,
spoke in low voices of her curse,
of her madness.
She had been like them—a woman,
who hummed as she tended her garden,
held her children wrapped in a quilt
stitched by the hands of her mother.
Tonight she haunts this bridge,
hooves thudding against pavement,
gait shamed and halting,
eyes clouded, dull and gray,
set too wide in a face no longer a face.
This creek runs slow and sullen,
night gathers like a wound
that will not heal.
Her silhouette crouches low,
bent and tense,
as if to leap from the shadows—
into the ruin we will become,
the sudden ash, the blackened bones
of children,
the ugliness of your own face,
grown old, grotesque with grief,
wreckage of what we thought
had been given to us to keep.
We fear this bridge,
from woman to monster,
where woods meet water,
as land gives way,
not for its distance,
but for what every traveler
must surrender one day.
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, somehow still never
mother, sister, or daughter,
who sittest enthroned
on celestial heights,
hollow is thy name.
Thy kingdom, vast and radiant,
mocketh this trembling world.
Thy will is done in heaven
as it is on earth,
where slaves bow
as seraphs sing.
Give us back yesterday,
the mercy of bread,
manna in the desert,
to eat while we can,
before we perish
like Moses and his children.
Forgive us our trespasses,
mean and multitudinous,
as we forgive thine,
great and mysterious.
Lead us not
into thy temptations,
but deliver us from the evil one,
from all subtle serpents
thou hast placed here with us.
For thine (not ours) is the kingdom
and the power
and the glory
—terrible and resplendent,
everlasting and without end.
Amen.
Hymn to Apasmara
O sacred bearer
of the cosmos,
root of rhythm,
dwarf demon
of dance,
each pause within
the pulse of time,
you curl beneath
the Lord’s firm step.
Your ignorance,
a blessing unbroken,
your forgetting,
the soft release
of fear undone.
In your blindness,
no graves are seen,
no ashes whisper loss.
O divine folly,
cradle of illusion,
you dream beyond
the turning wheel—
death forgotten,
souls set free.
You, who are crushed
yet never destroyed,
you, who are small
yet uphold the heavens,
without your fall,
none can rise,
without your weight,
no joyful foot ascends.
Hail the darkness
that guards the light,
hail the lies
that keep us whole!
-- Jacob Friesenhahn is the author of the poetry collection The Prayer of the Mantis (Kelsay Books, 2025). His poem "bog bodies" was previously published by APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL.