The Sundance Wives Ministry and Retreat

the woman
who got her first
branding iron laid
it in the hot coals fixin'
to cauterize religion's shameful
hide, the red-hot glow of the iron,
the lariat from her saddle unfurled,
that night she became unwound, so
did her rope,

she looked
over at Christian
cowboys picking
their teeth with whittled
twigs,

twenty paces
from the campfire
she stretched the tanned
hide out on the ground,

hammered in
four railroad spikes
one on each corner,
and tied it down,

twirling her
iron in the hot
coals, it rose from
the ashes like the phoenix,
it was ready to make its mark,

she flew it
on over to the
hide and branded
The Sundance Wives
Ministry in the buttery
brown center, 

it smoked,
it shapeshifted
into the panhandle,
announced Texas had
no warrant for arrest for
she was legally across the
border where time and distance
found her in the rapture Night of
the Foal, she wrapped the hide around
her, three women appeared in the dark -
because they were supposed to,

cosmic sparks
jumped from the
fire where her branding
iron laid, the outline of the
church steeple a finished ghost,
Kid Rock sings only god knows why,

The Sundance Wives
are welded into the design.
"Our mission won't change,
but the way we carry out our
mission will change."

The Sundance Wives
branding follows the criss-cross
of dusty roads with a feel of being
back in the Old West.

Copyright Ms. Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist