Back to Issue Eighteen.

The Fox Twin Theaters Plays The Omen

BY AIMÉE BAKER

 

(Cynthia May Hernandez, 20, missing since August 26, 1976 from Glendora, California)

If something frightening happens today,
it means the earth moves in circles.

On the screen a woman hung
from a window and the bearer of fire
was in the shape of a black dog.
She let popcorn dissolve
in her mouth as a man died
by the cross, as a woman fell
from the stairs.

And the words, “The child is dead,”
echoed through the theater.
Somewhere, swans swim on a river
and a comet fills the sky.
And here, outside the theater,
she walks on a sea of knives.
The night thorn dark,
heavy with the sound of leaves.

Here is our hope: the star of Bethlehem
will destroy all the sons of tumult.

You are one day closer.

Aimée Baker is the author of Doe, winner of the 2016 Akron Prize from University of Akron Press. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction appear or are forthcoming from journals such as The Southern Review, Copper Nickel, and Guernica. She currently lives in upstate New York, where she is an adjunct lecturer at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh.

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