Dispellations: A Prayer

Let dispersal reverse
                       
                         pull the core of the     	core

in                                    cinch the belly              of the lord’s

curse                pop it with                      a coiled



pin 				                     rehearse for worse

and worst 			              release the burn

of bitumen 					                         release

             the manikin 				                 boil



             shepherd’s purse to 		    voile

             blanch belladonna 		            to baste

the liver’s hoar 		             turn

the sun’s 		       dial



butter 		     both sides

                                        of foil 			           feast on

the final course
 



Anna Maria Hong is the author of Age of Glass, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Poetry Competition, the novella H & G, winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Clarissa Dalloway Book Prize, and Fablesque, winner of Tupelo Press’s Berkshire Prize. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Colorado Review, The Common, Plume, Ecotone, the Hopkins Review, Smartish Pace, Poetry Daily, The Best American Poetry, and other publications. She is an assistant professor at Mount Holyoke College.