for Greg
That Easter, my godmother took me to the tent revival.
Look John, she said, can you see the diamonds in the sky?
I said I could, & after the preacher roared his sermon,
we rushed the altar to be healed,
Ms. Caroline gripping me by the wrist.
I dove down Jesus’s hot white throat
as a man in the front row
thrashed in the dirt, Ms. Caroline
hurling her eyes cloud-ward.
How I yearned to see the angels above me, to hear
that stone rolling from the grave. Later
we drove in silence, Ms. Caroline grinding her teeth,
that silver cross dangling from her rear-view mirror.
My brother in law died today,
Resurrection Sunday. For years, he proclaimed the word,
voice messages that brimmed with New Testament quotes,
yarns about a raging hunger,
the morning he dropped to his knees in a black river,
& when he rose, there was no place he couldn’t call home.
Children comb the branches of trees,
peer under rocks, sprawl in flowerbeds.
They smear Jesus’s black pulp across their mouths,
reenacting the revels of our fairytale fathers,
who stabbed & ripped the old gods’ flesh,
rousing the new gods from their slumber,
singing & stomping to an ageless beat.
You shall press the hammer to your brow, I was told,
& know the agony of the universe.
You shall soar with wings on loan from the emperor of light.
A thousand graves empty in the radiant spring.
Shadows dissolve in the grass,
land of pollen & wafting blooms.
These decades later, I see that congregation, eyes
aglow, hands clutching the ankles of the Lord.
He is risen, Ms. Caroline said,
our sorrow his love shall fire to ash.
I press my palms to my ears to mute that
terrifying hallelujah, it still echoes in the long, red field.
