She is not
a minor figure
in this city’s (horned) making
Which, though, came first
the woman or the word disgraced
One man answered, without even being asked,
They came about
at the same time
The rest is history but I dare say
woman is no invention (unlike man)
and the other men say what does it matter
It was so long ago (now), we can’t change that (this)
Anymore
She, however, unlike other saints
who find themselves beyond personhood
She (woman) is living alongside her other self
once venerated became
a symptom of stained glass
fickle and prone to slump
When subjected, at once, to a number of
gravities greater than one
I urge you to avoid complete personification
of the myth (mis-telling)
She is not afforded a forehead
licked with thorns
just a plain pailing expression
What kind of architecture is a
Body after all?
What is it in the story that brings her about
other than a rumour of broken glass (guts)
a devoted spilling of trivial pieces
arranged (deranged) in painterly impression
secured with lead
the hardened lump
of scar tissue
What better place to lay to rest?
below slabs and stones
the hard edge of modern economy
a pageantry of seagulls and
the city's sulky weather
She, the monument, is just herself (woman)
in another body (image) and another life (time)
subjected to certain circumstances (violences)
making her so porous and secreting
of a scream split inside
the night sky and delivered back
to the city as a wet shock (rain)
and uniting the envy of the people that whisper
inevitably now her own fault
What redemption does a building offer?
Let me try again
What redemption can be offered inside a building?
on all fours and eyes cast up
to the panes (body) above
and a voice so thin
it hurts
As they said, it was writ and so
it goes unchanged (chained)
Saints demonstrate the morally perfect (imperfect),
the past (present), the truth (dredge)
in a traversal (bedragged) and subsequent
coming together of right/wrong
Published by Rosie’s Disobedient Press
As part of Teneu
2024