Jennie Stephenson

The ghosts of a chosen legacy

curl in rattling whispers, echoes of that

tarnished triumphal exodus rendered by the cleavage

of a foreboding sea and heralded

through the inciting song of Miriam.  

The Israelite root hacked down, defiled

and tormentingly grafted in the crucible promise

of a pagan adopted daughter to a widowed Mara,

the gleaner only rescued by the bestowed favor of a kinsman redeemer,  

his honor bound by the threads of marital covenant.

The tangled ancestry unfurling to seize