shot glass
title
Issue # 3 January 2011
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Bio


Maris O'Rourke, a New Zealander, has been writing poetry for almost three years. She has been published in various issues of Takahe, Bravado 20, Shot Glass Journal and was the featured poet in November 2010 'a fine line'. She was the runner-up in the 2009 Auckland Sonnet competition with Auckland Coast to Coast; selected for a New Zealand Society of Authors mentorship program in 2010; and runner up in the 2011 Robert Burns Poetry Competition with War Survivors.


Maris O'Rourke


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Looking for the Angel

No church escapes me.
I look for St Michael and St George and the Dragon
and light a candle to keep
my children safe.

Occasionally I ask the Marys
but they're all Byzantine flat-faced, sloe-eyed
holding the infant awkwardly and distantly
with face averted.

Somehow I feel in this world
that the Avenging Angel and St George
and their satisfying swords
will do a better job for me.