Some Spots You Can’t Remove

Your tape recorded voice
reading Virginia Wolfe,

your stiff
blue hands wrapped with rosary.

I’d like to believe death was your plan
all along. To take it too far,

kill the inner King, usurp a nation, be reborn
a better Queen.

But there was no salvation,
just your old bedroom

with a broken stereo
and a bloody dagger that could never

get clean. I found your spirit
in a cauldron, stuck

between your old life
and your new grim.

I’d like to free you from the murdered
you left like pictures

in a forgotten place.
Which painted devil holds

your hand in eternity?
When you ask him to wash

what’s invisible, do you show
the inside of your arm, spread

your toes, or go
mad?

Born in a blizzard with the gift of premonition, Bernadette McComish is an educator, producer, and a poetry oracle. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Press, The Cortland Review, Slipstream, Peregrine, For Women Who Roar, Flypaper Magazine, Waxing and Waning, Indolent Books, and Rising Phoenix, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, was a finalist for the C.D. Wright Prize, the Joy Harjo Prize, and the New Millennium Writings 41st Poetry Prize, and won the 2022 Kali Moksha Prize in Poetry. Her chapbooks include The Book of Johns (Dancing Girl Press, 2018) and Florence Nightingale’s Lost Log (Lily Poetry Review, 2021). Her debut full-length, Prophets of Los Angeles, was published by The Los Angeles Press in 2023.