by Kendra Thompson

Do you think you’ll also leave us?
Be thrown out, discarded, 
like broken lamps and
weathered postage stamps?

Will you, though, be discarded? 
Or will your legacy be regarded, 
a stamp, so tethered to its post
no thumbnail could remand it. 

Will I be thrown out, or do they dare regard me? 
With legacy’s stark retardant, apostolic
succession, women’s…oppression? 
Militant (chuckle) fecundity? 

They say God’s truth starts with apostolic
fruit. Read the rings around the stump
and count your women in succession
so babies born bear their reflection:
 
True rings, fair fruit, not stumped
by the fullness of our species
nor births that fill most verdant nurseries
for there is more than paternalia in these trees. 

---

Kendra Thompson is a wife, mother, writer and minister living in Northwest Iowa. Her work has appeared in Spectrum, Body Love for All, Poet’s Choice and These Interesting Times. You can find more of her writing on her blog www.crylaughsnort.wordpress.com

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