Massacre at Béziers: 1209 by Jessica Cuello: A poetry recording

It’s time for the next installment in our poetry recordings here at LUMINA.

Jessica Cuello’s poem “Massacre at Béziers: 1209” received 3rd place in our 2012 poetry contest judged by Carolyn Forché. We hope you enjoy the following audio clip of the poem in Jessica’s own voice.

Massacre at Béziers: 1209
by Jessica Cuello

– How will we know the true believers from the Cathars?
– Kill them all–God will know his own.

We returned to Béziers.
We upended the unhinged

door, buried the limbs,
spread dirt on the oily pools.

Five times I labored
in this world. And safe

my grown children. I place
the head of the girl with the girl.

Her mother wears a strand of red
from looting. When we had cleaned up best

we could, we sat apart in a field.
No one made food. We were afraid of taste.

——-

Jessica Cuello is a poet and French teacher in Central NY. Her first chapbook, a biographic poem cycle about the scientist Marie Curie, came out in 2011. New poems are forthcoming in Tampa Review, Clackamas, and The Comstock Review. Cuello also has a new chapbook, “By Fire,” which you can look for in 2013 from Hyacinth Girl Press and includes the above poem.