In a Motel Room in New Mexico by John Grey

Men and women

cluster about, all in dark robes,

the ones that gather automatically

when there's been some kind

of unrest in the realm of the spirit.

Hands reach into you,

grasp bloody and raw.

They get the pain out of the way

so the trembling can begin.

You see the blade

like a grinning star in the heavens,

the foil of the one the shepherds saw.

Cut away from you,

the child is passed

from hand to hand,

interrogated with a knowing glance.

Everyone but you

can hold the newcomer

to their dark chest.

These are doctors, nurses.

You are a new mother.

He is a baby, red-faced and hungry.

Shame about the horns.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review and failbetter.