I tagged the following poems…
Catacombs of San Callisto which reflects on the early images of Christ and the ways bodies are defined, with these lines in the midst of it
“We’re told by books old as these walls:
Filthy, our bodies, yours and mine. Not so.”
Sans Souci after reflecting on Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of St. Thomas the second part of the poem is this…
“I believe in art more often than your cock.
We thought a getaway would loosen us up,
shake off our post-Freudian feelings.
We should work on us, I say. (Sorry,
I’m an ice queen.) You light a Turkish cigarette,
its smoke not so different from the incense
in the nearby church housing a saint’s
gilded hand – if not flesh, then body be gold.
Can’t you just suck me off? (I’m alive.)
Sometimes drinking beer together, chilling
the sweat on our chests, is enough.
You lean against the French door,
all the hairs of your body black and glistening.
I turn to minutiae and away from you.”
And part 5 of the same poem reflecting on an Etching of Adam and Eve
St. Sebastian’s Executioner
“…
He was not young with his belly and puffy limbs.
He was not quiet any more than he was beautiful,
tethered and beaten, but I still cannot name what
he died for. His death was many years ago.
I am the bear trudging off – bear gone; hear moving,
unmoved – to whatever men peace it knows…”
And At the Grave of Zora Neale Hurston
The Christian imagery is probably particularly powerful for me – but the seamless move between the language of Art History and the bodily is where this collection really stands out.
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