The Sacrilege of a Tilted Axis

We wear heat like a rough hair shirt to prove
our faith, swelter inside a zealot’s skin,
each breath a battle against steamy air.
Our days are sanctified by fiery purge.
This is our one true religion. We sing
hymns of praise to mercury, our doctrine
built upon a creed of worn compliance.
Even the innocent seek forgiveness
when summer storms break Heaven with bone-shake
rumble. The passionate prayers we submit
are penitent, exultant, or pleading,
depending upon the thinness of blood.

Conversion always begins in whispers.
Mystics find prophecy in black locust
turning, sycamore samaras spinning,
raining down upon the earth like a plague.
Every truth exhausts itself in time.
Alpha cedes to omega, infidels
turn their gaze to the western horizon
where old gods creep and slide into descent.

“The Sacrilidge of a Tilted Axis” first appeared in Tennessee Voices Anthology 2023-24.

Why I’m Not Appalachian

My people came down from those high mountains
dead set on finding a good enough life
off to the west, a land where horizons
hug the ground and rest easy on the eye,

where men can till fields in straight rows, where wide
flat vistas spread out in all directions,
where night falls so slow it meets morning light.
They brought resources from those high mountains:

backbones strong enough to hold the heavens
up, hands grasping carved-stone rules to live by,
heads wrapped in bread-and-bean expectations,
hearts content to live with good-enough. Life,

they knew, was a rocky slope; you could slide
straight to Hell if you bore fancy notions.
To be safe they pinched their coins and dreams tight,
tamed and leashed. In a land where horizons

bare it all, there’s no place for illusions
to grow, or for superstitious moonshine
to overshadow common sense. Visions
don’t bring the crops in, so they locked their eyes

on the constant earth, not the fickle sky.
Unadorned plains served eight generations,
filled their bellies and kept them satisfied,
but my own hunger craves those high mountains
from which my people came.

“Why I’m not Appalachian” first appeared in Tennessee Voices Anthology 2022-23.

Deborah-Zenha Adams is an award-winning author of novels, short fiction, CNF, and poetry, and served as executive editor of Oconee Spirit Press for ten years. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Roanoke Review, WELL READ Magazine, Dead Mule, Persimmon Tree, and other journals. You’re invited to visit her website: www.Deborah-Adams.com.