St. George's Day by Mary-Alice Thompson It is the spring’s dark trough, a late Good Friday, Late and personal, for no god died, just a child Not even that, really, just a hope or fear Of what is new and undefined, carried in The wobbly slush of me, mysterious bulging, Sickening. Hope is like that, too, and confidence, Like falling flat-out from the crack you never saw. The time before you comprehend, that flash of Disbelief — but I was just there, I can’t be Here — and then the rip, and — how could I be So clumsy, how so unaware? — and the voice that whispers you wanted this. St. George Protect me! You’re my fitting patron, you who never were, conjured by everyone who found a dragon sitting on their chest or sleeping in the womb and couldn’t bear it.
A former university teacher, poetry editor, playwright, and lawyer, Mary-Alice Thompson (she/her) works in many genres. Her literary and legal sides are braided into her first novel, Pink House, a psychological mystery of memory and reckoning. Poetry, however, will always be her first love. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, on traditional Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory.
