Poetry by Gina Marie Bernard

               ​Tyler Cipriani CC




Non-bearing
 
 
His car is filthy:
cracked cassette cases litter the floor,
 
liner notes warped and faded;
on the dash, a straw and lid— 
 
the molded Diet tab depressed;
.
wedged into a drink holder,
stained hamburger wrappers.
.
They cruise past a church
on the outskirts of town.
 
How must faith be framed
to the devout kneeling inside?
 
Walls level, plumb, and square—trusses vaulted, 
cathedral gables erected toward God.
.
Through his speakers, 
a desperate voice pleads for love to return.
.
He unzips his pants, frees
what he needs exalted,
.
but his gaze remains on the road,
intent as the face of a hammer.                  
.
She is the nail—so bent he must roll 
and tap her straight, to be driven again
.
recycled by this rhythm, rhythm, rhythm to come. 
 
He parks. His calloused fingers trace her throat, 
brush a cheek—claw a fistful of hair.
 
He levers her down and she galvanizes;
his moans swell as if pulled from wood. 
 
And beneath his idling engine all she recalls
is that Jesus was a carpenter,
 
and that she should catalogue all of this—blueprints
she will need to construct her own salvation.

​
​

Gina Marie Bernard will one day make homemade mead from the honey produced by her apiary! Bees are so friggin' cool! Her daughters, Maddie and Parker, share her heart. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best Micro-fictions, and The Pushcart Prize. She identifies as trans and is a lifelong unipolar depressive. She is completing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas, Monticello.

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