A Brief Lesson From the Wife of Jesus (Surprise!)

I am not a nun.

Bless me for I have hidden
in plain sight
all these years.

Every picture ever taken
of me by the curious
the seekers
the pilgrims of fate
and unlucky circumstance
(except the ones smoking
Lucky Strikes…
except for them)
develops into one pulsing red eye.

Giant hulking bull’s eye
on glossy vellum.

You know why,
don’t you?
It’s the blood.
(Always the blood
never clotting,
flowing freely,
an iron river gone mad).

The flash opens my eye,
dilates my cornea.

I see the light

and the light reaches
black fingers in,
stretches the ring wide
wide

pushing back memory
pushing back truth,
scholars,
rough-robed men,

claiming with their pens
to know everything.

The little black spot opens
and all you see is
my blood.
Not spilling
but pooling.

Gelled.
An arc of a broken covenant.

Amen.


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So, one morning, watching my daughter fill up her giant plastic tug boat with water, I imagined a story told by the wife of Jesus. I read about half of the Brown novel that put forth the notion that Jesus' wife was in the Last Supper painting. I never get into reading "popular" novels (I seriously can't remember the name of that book...). But the notion of Jesus having a wife, aside from the nuns who vow to be the bride of Jesus (don't they? I'm not Catholic, so I'm unsure), stayed with me.

So, here it is. Me, the poet, removed from the telling of the tale.