Lift My Chin, Lord 

Lift my chin, Lord,
Say to me,
“You are not who
You feared to be,
Not Hecate, quite,
With howling sound,
Torch held upright,
Black acolyte
Gone underground.

Not consort to
Persephone,
Not Queen of Night
Who, hurling through
The highest blue
Of blessed airs
Your gruesome prayers,
Hit Heaven’s Queen—
A crone, crone of the unforeseen.
Not chthonic-skinned
And triple-tongued,
And lunar-lung’d.

Lift my chin, Lord,
Let me mend—
A mother to the damned,
A friend
Pledged to the dead,
Daughter adored
By those abhorred,
Grown through the grave. Lord,
Lift my head. 

—Jennifer Reeser