Marianne Kunkel
—
Push
Except ye repent...wo unto them which are with child, for they shall be heavy and cannot flee; therefore, they shall be trodden down and shall be left to perish.
—Helaman 15:2, The Book of Mormon
It’s true
to run right now would be difficult.
Eight months pregnant, I can’t
stoop to put on socks;
each morning I sit down
and lift a puffy foot
onto my other leg’s knee,
reach around my belly
wide as a swimming pool,
and pray I hook the sock tip
onto my big toe. Even walking
beyond my porch
onto flat sidewalk
is unpleasant;
my hips are loose screws
and as I gently trudge,
a baby heavy as a bag of nails
bears down. I’m aware
I could be effortlessly
taken out—tripped,
trampled, shoved
or punched in the belly
as a drunk once pretended
doing to me at a party.
So husband,
when you rub my feet
and I ask you to wring them out
like a wet dishrag,
what I mean is I’m searching
for a sacred language
that combines pain and love,
the delicious way your hands
pulverize my metatarsals—the way
I’ll soon expel our baby,
some word kinder
than push.
True Blue Mormon
And thus they satisfied the queen concerning the death of the king.
—Alma 47:35, The Book of Mormon
Remember desire? I ask a queen while fluffing her wedding gown
and straightening a violet and ivy crown on her brow.
She tilts her head and scrunches her nose, like a fish
trying to remember flight. Today she’s marrying an army general
whose troops swore to her they saw the late king’s servants
stab him to death. It’s a lie. I wonder if that word satisfied
is also a lie; for a month, I attended a Mormon college
in Virginia and felt bluer than the hazy, blue-green mountains
outside my dorm window, but when my parents phoned
I described my perky roommate and the pasta bar, acting satisfied.
As I paint the queen’s lips pink, I think her jaw clenches,
trapping questions she never asked the general: What motive
did his servants have to murder him? Who were you
before you schmoozed your way to General? The truth is,
this general ordered his troops to kill the king, hunger for power
like a boiling cloud blocking even the brightest sun.
This bride-to-be was that sun. Two scripture verses
before the troops’ phony story, it’s written she desired
and desired and desired: for her people to be safe, for the general
to explain how the king died, for him to bring witnesses.
Now she slinks out of the dressing room and out of the book forever.
As for me, I dropped out of college, not abandoning desire
but boomeranging into a man’s tattooed arms that had wrapped
around my hips, thumb on my zipper, the previous summer.
Mormon Hangover
Did I dream those low-lit dances in the gym?
Fourteen, horny, I’d hold any boy’s hand.
I swear the only tunes were sped-up hymns.
Streamers tentacled basketball hoop rims.
There was always Sprite (no Coke) in lukewarm cans.
Did I dream those low-lit dances in the gym?
At last a guy approached me: hunky Jim.
We swayed eight inches apart (a Bible’s span)
to the tune, I swear, of a sped-up hymn.
Out of body. My palm sweaty in Jim’s.
He spoke, and I froze like an ottoman.
Did I dream those low-lit dances in the gym?
I trudged back to a padded wall brimming
with long-sleeved girls, shame flowing faster than
a keyboard’s trill in a sped-up hymn.
Could be worse, my friend sighed. I like her, not him.
Or did she come out to me in a church van?
Did I dream those low-lit dances in the gym?
I swear the only tunes were sped-up hymns.
Marianne Kunkel is the author of Hillary, Made Up (Stephen F. Austin State University Press) and The Laughing Game (Finishing Line Press), two anthologies, and many poems, including one in Best American Poetry 2025. She is Associate Professor of English at Johnson County Community College and co-editor of Kansas City Review and president of Whispering Prairie Press. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she was managing editor of Prairie Schooner.
© Bear Review 2025
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Site Design + Build
October Associates
