now these things are strange enough
to be sacred, again.

The words, they are stark upon black-and-white page;
from them rise power, shame, and disgrace.
Labor pains, sodomy, a black mark and names
saddled their bearers and held taught the reins.
White men took letters and midrashed around them;
Sending old tales and black dogs to hound them.
Those who hold pens will always be victors
over the bitches, faggots, and niggers.

God breathed line-sketches; men filled them in,
colored with blood and ashes and sin.
Weak divine scripture faltered and fell
to the preachers and bishops who rushed forth from hell.
Anxious to consolidate power and wealth
they wove webs like spiders in darkness and stealth.
Embellishing God’s truth they changed all the stories,
sexed up creation, redemption, and glory.

EDEN
the human gasped a first breath; it was
bright and all the animals were
swarming curiously. God sat off to the side,
wiping sweat off their triune brows with muddy hands.

Later God put their heads together, then put their hands on
human’s head and sent him into the first sleep.
when the human awoke, there was a hole in its chest.
no, its chest was split in two. where was the rest of it?
now the man feels inadequate, and hungry, and frustratedly sad.
over there, in the tulips. she stirs, sighs, and wakes.
in her eyes is all the surety he’s been desiring.
God walks to them, smiling. “Look, now if you are lonely,
there is someone to talk to; now, if you are drowning,
there is someone to pull you out of deep water. Just do not
go seeking too much. You have all you need. You are all
you need to be.”

Snake is jealous and cunning. Snake’s own uniqueness has gone
unacknowledged in the shining face of the woman.
Snake falls upon them one day, twining sinuously from a branch:
“Would you, would you
like to be
more than you are?
Here, children, take and eat. You will not surely die. You can
be wiser and more beautiful than you are.”
They eat and they know and they are shamed
and they have trusted someone more than God, more than themselves.
They thought God would withhold delight,
they thought something else could pull them,
gasping and terrified,
from deep primordial waters.

The story is about not sex
not submission
not silence
but delight
recognition
and the delicate nature
of relation.

I remember the callouses on your fingers,
but nothing that you said,
except: “That’s bullshit, Sarah,”
when I wanted to die.

There is documentation of you.
I know we existed together,
in the same spheres,
singing like wet fingers on wineglasses.
We revolved around each other.
You were my sun; I was your moon.
I reflected you. I was young,
and in love.

I wrote you poetry.

I bought a journal.
I began, meticulously, to document the days,
to document my joys,
to document my love.
It was like tracking an addiction
or a pregnancy.

You know, don’t you, that the brain reacts to
the disintegration of two lovers
like it reacts to quitting crack cocaine
cold turkey?
Maybe you don’t; after all, I read it somewhere…
No wonder I shook in cold sweats on the bathroom floor,
screaming.

And in
walked
Rob.
I swear he suspected
what was going on at night,
when I curled into a small ball
and my mantra was: sleep, sleep, sleep
(but sleep never came).
He made me go places. Go to the mall. Eat.
Be bored with him.
He’s been watching me reconstruct myself
ever since.

When, in April 2009, I rose again,
he cheered me on. His exuberant
young bellows drowned out
the papery, the shrill,
the cruel cold judgments.
He asked me about God once;
I waxed poetic.
He asked me about God again;
I said I didn’t believe in God
that day,
but I probably would
tomorrow.

Travis, too,
burst in ferociously,
demanding what the hell
was wrong with me,
drumming on a set named
Kathleen.
I wondered why we weren’t
dancing.
Later we realized that
we were both grieving
rebounding
pretending we were normal
when we were both
damaged goods.

In April 2010,
I came clean.
Told him I’d been saved.
He laughed and said he’d just watched
Jennifer Knapp on Larry King.

His girl got married,
my boy got married;
he went to Africa,
I went to Nashville.

In Nashville,
typically enough,
guitars hang on our dining room wall.
Less typically,
prayer flags hang in our bedroom.

My Theotokos and I curl into one another,
small sighs escaping our mouths.

prophesy, daughter,
of the love which you know.

oh, it burns in my belly,
but i am afraid.

one day, one day, daughter,
you will prophesy.
you will not be able to hold it in,
up it will come, like vomit, like orgasm, like birth,
like insistent blooming flowers through dirt,
like volcanic ash which devastates then enriches all the land about it.
you will cry out:

there is a love in me i cannot hold in,
there is a love i cannot be silent about,
there is a love which when i speak it
will brighten the sun and water the ground

there is a love to me which has restored this rib and i am whole,
and i am pulled out of muddy waters day after day.
God saw this love and said it was good.

The eyes of God’s children widened first in scandal
then in awe. They began to weep because they had been
stealing ribs from people, cracking the bone and pulling bodies apart,
pushing people’s heads underwater.

and still,
and still,
i wish i was
brave enough to tear
my skin

it would be the coming of myself
to fullest glory, to this,
the most recognizable and truest
part of myself,
the one which for years
has desired this:
the end

i run a hand over my own skin
send that hand shuttling forward
an emissary to better times.

((word vomit needs lots and lots of work))