The H is for High-and-Dry
Christ has risen! And then He moved into my place, flopped down on my couch, and hasn’t risen since.
He eats my cereal and refuses to learn where my vacuum cleaner is.
He says His dad’s got work lined up for Him out of state, but the job doesn’t start until after Easter.
Some days, arriving home from work, I have to navigate legions of cripples and blind lepers to get to my front
door and into my living room, where He’ll be on my couch performing healings—
except, of course, during All My Children.
Sometimes His crew rolls up, and they kick it in my living room, but usually
He kicks His feet up on my coffee table,
kicks off His sandals, and kicks
their asses at Halo.
He hasn’t washed even a fork since He showed up here with His satchel of herb, but my feet are as clean as ever.
I wish I could say the same for the toilet—apparently
He’s not acquainted with flushing
or toilet paper—His robes are starting to reek.
But He is fun at parties:
B.Y.O.H2O!
And it is nice to have more prostitutes around the house—maybe one of them will tell my landlord not to worry about the missing rent check.
I’ve been too busy scrubbing wine stains out of my carpet to ask for rent.
This morning I woke—He was gone, left only a dirty pillowcase,
my fig-stained couch and an old pile of IOU’s.
Fingers like Snakes
Outside the courthouse, two young women
walk by—I look at the breasts: these pairs,
tiny, like gentle rises in the landscape
of a barren chest—I realize why
I’ve always gravitated toward the small ones—
it’s that they look underdeveloped, like the body
still contains its ancient innocence,
like the girls I first noticed in sixth
grade, the awkward glances, the pure
joy of the playground, a lifted skirt.
Sacrament
The priest’s hands are red with cash
and the salvation of just under a million
served—Sunday visitors that weave
through the oaken doors, past stained glass
storybooks, to stop at penitent seating
and murmurs of fear disguised as calculated
arguments for personal salvation.
He again thrusts his spotted hands in the air,
a practiced motion he calls beseeching—
the frontmost parishioners are misted with pages he boils down into
flecks of red— the easiest argument to make
centuries of study and a thousand children could devise this:
What you are feeling is correct, my children.
You are not enough, and never shall you be.
He made us incomplete, which is why we must
seek Him. The organ inhales,
the parish turns its pages—today’s hymn:
God Hates Everyone but Me.
