God Girl

 
I was born (again?) two times:
Christened first, then second dipped in a luke-
Warm pool with Satan, I rebuke
Thee, saved with pantomimes

(Hand down, across) and breath
Held in the ghost’s holy name before
My family and crowd. Encore?
Bear me again. In death,

I’m good. At church, each hat
Appeared as a centerpiece of lace-
Wrapped buds. I watched the angel face
Stained in the ziggurat-

Like tiers of storied glass
Go flush in sun, turn corpse opaque
With clouds. And I, for heaven’s sake,
Took heaven’s biomass,

Washing feet first in the church
Basement, feet hosed and pedicured.
I held the shot-glassed blood and stirred
Beside the Eden birch

Weeping to baked-in grass.
It waxed green as crayon. My fingertip
Went plum. Mom said, God, girl, take the sip
Already. The church, en masse,

Voiced a terse Amen. God Girl:
I love that end to the final verse,
Revelation to Genesis, Eve’s curse
In blood, the sidewalk twirl

Of sisters in Gunne Sax
Chiffon, Ham’s myth and that dark dream
Where lepers lose their limbs, each ream
Of Bible type in black,

The Jesus red, the crack-
ing joints post-kneel. But most, the knell—
Not dismal as Longfellow’s wailing bell
And “Afternoon” amphibrach,

But chimes the same for death,
Wedding, or simply Sunday mass
On Broad—reverberating glass,
Sound like an isopleth

Connecting days, each day
Signaling New. And when the hearse
Holds me, (hell yes) recite the verse.
This is my body. And say

I’m sacrilege in my
Weekend best, God bless, and straight to Hell
For that I shalt not ever tell.
Remember me as I

Go under, over, pass
And turn to Old, from God’s baby
Thrice born, in bone twice souled, to three
In liquid, solid, gas.