Some nights I’m young again; a child choking on the body of Christ. I read
this is common, that most of us weep behind holy doors because we cannot breathe.
I expect more from a room so full of sound and archaic sadness. I expect a cure.
But blood spills in unpredictable patters no matter the orifice.
It’s not the thorny crown that transfixes me most nor the loincloth
suggestively drooping below a wooden navel but the woman
composed purely out of brushed-blue glass; how the light intensifies her figure,
how her mouth appears to hide something— a secret
to dethrone all secrets. Some nights I string my heart from the ceiling
along with the others and hum their haunted whale psalms, high
beneath an ocean of muscle.
Kristen Rouisse holds an MFA from the University of South Florida in poetry. Her work has appeared in RHINO Poetry, Glass Poetry Press, Hobart, Yes Poetry, and Superstition Review, among others. She teaches writing online at USF and is currently working on her first book.