Weeping wood, burls of blood, I see an arc of ancestors,
a Jacob’s Ladder from my Jesus’ brow, back into Avram’s
bosom. This tree without leaves will bear only gory fruit.
Water and wine, and these punctured feet I clutch, oh how
visceral the silver nails stab into Godly flesh, moldy bread.
They will say I was taken up by angels and did not putrify.
But penitent in the desert, I was a corpse, and my seven
devils taught me philosophy, arithmetic, divination, magic.
There is always a Sorceress at the heart of every story, a
prophetess, whether Daughter of Zion or Morgan Le Fay,
and at Bethany in my sister and I’s house, Martha baked,
and I listened to Gospel, and I anointed with myrrh saved
for three years, cost a fraction of the tribulation to come.
And now the angel of my better nature is suspended between
what is and what is not, and I am Eve in his skin cloth, wasted.
I will drink my fill of Him in time, but grow old and cold.
At the foot of the cross is a shadow, it says, be fruitful and
prosper. But mine is a covenant of wicked delights, found
at epileptic fits and bipolar highs and lows, and only cool
hands of thunderclouds can ease my sorrows, in his Death
and Ressurection, there was a voice of mice within me: oh
Miriam: be bold. Live like Gabriel’s trumpet is lowing, take
your words as swords and preach in the desert, they will
call you a whore and heretic, but my Qadesh was my goddess
once, and I Michael tell you, better to have tasted the parting
of love and buried your father, brother, and son, then to never
know the shadow of the cross.