"Christian Child."
I remember the dark maroon of the armrests, real imitation
velvet.
The mat that would jerk gently back and forth under my thumb.
I still sucked it seven years old, eight, nine.
I remember the soft feathery darkness vast around us,
a real theater, my mother next to me.
I was allowed one movie a year, on Good Friday.
A three hour movie, because Jesus
hung on the cross from noon to 3:00 on an April afternoon,
in AD 33.
There was no baby, no comet, no cow, no gift.
There was Palm Sunday, the nought-man almost
like a bearded lady coming in on the burro.
The Last Supper, family meal time tainted and uneasy.
The whole family of grown boys hairy in the 90s.
The night in the garden, the name
of the garden like cloves, sesame, Gethsemane.
Everyone slept but the isolated boy.
And then the kiss, as if every good thing
would be taken and turned to bad.
30 pieces of silver, like the change in my mother's purse
I took to buy donuts.
Planetary rings of glazed isolated pleasure, room
and shields, swords blood-red, shaving brush,
coxcombs curved forward over the soldier's heads.
And then the king, washing and washing his hands as if power
were a stain to come off, and the crowd chose the thief.
The brat with a name like Brer Rabbit Molasses,
Barabbas, the one who filched coins.
It was all so terrible, wonderful, huge,
enormous before us in the dark.
My mother rigid, the crown across between barbed wire
and a woven Easter basket.
They set it on his head, and pounded it into his scalp
gently with a wooden mallet.
Of course, they made him carry his own cross
through the streets.
The way you have to eat the cold food
you left from the last meal, before you'll be given hot.
But then they took his real hand and held the fingers open,
and poised the blunt point of that uneven spike,
in the center of his palm where you can hold your soul
and they held it.
The other hand, the way they crossed the thin parts
of the feet to save a nail.
I didn't get sick.
I had a strong stomach, but something
had to bend to get the knowledge to my brain past my heart,
that this was what people do to each other.
The spear delicately opening the oval spear-shaped slit
in his side.
When he said, I thirst, like a kid in bed at night.
And they raised the sponge like a wet rice crispy
on the end of that long stick, and the sponge
was soaked in vinegar.
My mouth was open, and my eyes so open, my sockets ached.
I held the animal scurf of the armrest,
and felt my mother's body shake with controlled passion.
Then they brought his mother to the base of the cross.
She looked up, up, up until she could see her boy.
He gave her to his friend.
He turned his head, and spoke to the thief on the cross
to his right, this evening thou shalt be with me in paradise.
I heard his deep, male voice and some other noise.
Some bad mammal sound in the theater,
a trapped poor cry that was coming from my own mouth.
It is finished, He whispered.
And then thank God, He died.
Loud music, violins, horns, the lights came up.
I saw my own hand on the dark red velvet.
I saw the horrible world.
And Sunday, they would find the stone rolled away from tomb.
His diaper perfectly folded.
People would stick the length of their finger
into the holes in him.
He would walk on the lake easily, sweetly.
But now it was Friday.
Electric chair day, whack day, cross day.
My mother wiping her small face, wild and meek.
And if she was Jesus, I knew who was Pontius Pilate, Caesar,
Lucifer.
And yet my father lay on the couch like a deposition,
his arms open like a newborn baby with a new reflex that
cannot help.
And he never hurt me physically.
While my mother with astonishing energy,
tried to hit the devil out of me.
And first, I had to strip to the waist from the floor
up, wait on the exact center of her rug.
Not today.
This was Good Friday.
Only two more days till they hid the eggs,
those beautiful rosy ovals.
the chick all chalk yolk, and they gave you a chocolate
rabbit for the end of Lent.
I'd start with the ears, solid, something to grind my molars
and canines against.
And then come to the hollow body, one bite
and it exploded, fragile, powerful, sweet, a threat
and a promise.