The Great West Window

The Great West Window

Sarah G. Pouliot

Musket bullets and thrown bishop bones
smash Winchester’s stained glass
like a wave erupting on sea stacks.

Splintered hands gather the remnants of the war into boxes—
a memorial of unknown sacrums and femurs joined in tombs,
one man’s limb reburied with another’s.

And now, I ruminate on the refigured window,
sunlight piercing sapphire trapezoids and ruby ovals
as I piece together fractured

faces to envision what portraits once sunbathed.
But the scenes are unreadable,
veiled in a narrative of kaleidoscopic light.

A tapestry of asymmetrical shards
woven into chromatic chaos—
the wings of a chimera butterfly.

Some segments are more severed than others,
but the light passes through all the same,
flickering on the medieval tile under my feet,

lingering towards the pale nave vault
that concaves like Botticelli’s scallop,
birthing Venus onto the shore.

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Sarah G. Pouliot
Poet & Editor

Sarah has been published in Saw Palm, Blue Marble Review, Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, and Living Waters Review with forthcoming work in Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith and Sigma Tau Delta Review. In 2024, she was named the Outstanding Graduate for English from Palm Beach Atlantic University and now works as a contract copywriter and editor at The Mom Community. You can read more of her work at https://sarahgpouliot.my.canva.site/.

Photography by Mike Bird