Americana

for Ethel Cain

Once I was an only son, before I morphed in the twilight, chasing golddust through rumblepines, red dirt caked on my silver pumps. I came home with my blouse torn, mother banished me to the barn, that sad ark packed with pitchforks & ringsaws. Pray on your bare knees until dawn, she said, but returned early, ushering me into a frigid night. Coyotes stalked us as we trudged our way to the windows, the glowing hearth. Pa was in the back room of the house, one ear pitched for the voice of the Lord, which perhaps he heard or thought he heard or didn’t hear at all but said he did, one ear tuned to the floorboards, which moaned each time I skewed from his kingdom to my own. He stared from the threshold, asking me again if I relished being a sinner. Why yes pa, I said, I love fire on my toes, blood in my throat, my teeth tearing holes in the sky. I regretted that later, as he foundered in a hospital cot, a stranger I hadn’t touched in twenty years, the wasted disciple who claimed to hear the Lord’s directive spiraling amidst the monitors, sparking the drywall. The holy vapor swam laps in his IV drip, treading the blood that flooded his limbs. That flooded mine, too. I wiped my father’s meaty lips with the hem of my opera gown. My mother reeled his final gasp, saved it in a mahogany bible box. Fifty years they guarded their latches, lest someone enter who shouldn’t, lest a demon breach their graces. So much wrath & loathing, so much salvation for sale. If honest, I still pound their door, waiting for them to say yes come in, waiting for them to call me their glorious daughter—you don’t know, it could happen.

Jesus, the Later Years

Long after the hullabaloo, Phil snagged a rental in Capernaum. Afternoons, Jesus ambled downtown, mumbling to himself in the waterfront cafes. When we gathered on Thursdays, he often remained silent. Once he told a joke about a disciple & a guru, but his delivery floated in the redbuds, drawn-out, zigzagging like a crazy bird. No one could perch on his punchline. Summer was sticky, memories hung over us like a red cloud. Judas published a book of poems, pages filled with black flowers & the smell of iron. Simon stirred his novel, Mary stoked her album on the north shore, tracks brimming with violins & Caribbean beats. Soon enough, reporters appeared on the stoop, insistent hands slapping the doorbell. Barbwire whispers in the street. Hey, bub, someone growled, why don’t you turn my fucking paycheck into a million bucks? We smelled another wave rising, resentment swelling like a sick bloom. We flashed to the mob on the hill, Peter dreamt of soldiers & a blue rooster, its throat cut at dawn. This is how gospel becomes an Instagram post, how the messiah becomes a vagrant squatting on a curb, his palms as smooth as marble, all that thunder scooped from his chest. This is how the burning bush withers in the sunlight. We packed the van, speeding through hail to Gadara, where I hooked up with a powder crew, stomping baggies on Saturday morning. Jesus sat in a green room, staring out a bay window while Zach read to him from Mother Goose or Where the Wild Things Are. Each time we called his name, tossing a rope into that deep gorge, it took longer & longer to bring him home.