Easter Poem- warning: religious imagery
The Body
Bread slices are soft bodies that could crawl into your eyes and die there and they do.
While leaving the grocery store on Good Friday,
the automatic door is half a second too slow, and I pause for a moment before going through it.
I stare at my reflection, and I can see the bread rising in my eyes.
It doesn’t look like me.
I have to remind myself. This is my body.
The door slides away, gracelessly, like its pulling a shirt over its head.
I walk by a boy standing outside waiting for his father. He kicks a stone
and the stone rolls away.
In the evening, I chew squares of bread into people shapes
and play hide-and-seek with my own body.
It isn’t long before I can no longer remember what I look like,
Or what it is that I’m looking for.
I try to find a photo on a shelf or a desk, something my mind can memorize.
I want to look at something and know that it is my body.
There’s a picture on the wall of my family, and I look at the two-dimensional past.
I grab myself up in brainfuls.
The Treachery of Images.
Ceci n'est pas mon corps.
why are you looking for the living among the dead
Bread slices are soft bodies that could crawl into your eyes and die there and they do.
While leaving the grocery store on Good Friday,
the automatic door is half a second too slow, and I pause for a moment before going through it.
I stare at my reflection, and I can see the bread rising in my eyes.
It doesn’t look like me.
I have to remind myself. This is my body.
The door slides away, gracelessly, like its pulling a shirt over its head.
I walk by a boy standing outside waiting for his father. He kicks a stone
and the stone rolls away.
In the evening, I chew squares of bread into people shapes
and play hide-and-seek with my own body.
It isn’t long before I can no longer remember what I look like,
Or what it is that I’m looking for.
I try to find a photo on a shelf or a desk, something my mind can memorize.
I want to look at something and know that it is my body.
There’s a picture on the wall of my family, and I look at the two-dimensional past.
I grab myself up in brainfuls.
The Treachery of Images.
Ceci n'est pas mon corps.
why are you looking for the living among the dead