Friday, November 3, 2017

Winner of The PERSONALSAVIORLORDJESUSCHRIST Poetry Contest

Promises Had Been Made 
          

The women hide nothing.
She, captured in 
         accusation,
a collaborative creator.

Her envelopment has no meaning
         to a dead man
         whose death won’t 
         even end death.
Promises had been made.

Would that be me in her arms?
Not me here on 
         a bench in the gallery’s center
         squaring off
with loneliness and imagination, 
         both being among art’s disciples.

But some me – with a body 
         almost human as his.
         I know much of everything 
         but not enough.

An other Mary, 
         head lowering to his arm – 
         his conjuration of a once life
                    – touching but for
the confident artist’s oils of
         celestial buoyancy.

The men are concerned in their way,
         eyes averted from mine.
         I’m no Mary.
Loyal middle-management, they deny
the present’s threat of pain, 
         the present’s carry-through.

He is translucent in her arms,
         an embodied splay of 
         too much beauty to be real.
_____
Sarah Sarai. 2017. 
Winner of The PERSONALLORDSAVIORJESUSCHRIST Poetry Contest 2017, sponsored by Chris Rice Cooper. Chosen by Helen Losse, emeritus editor at The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature journal. Ekphrastic: Based on The Entombment by Moretto de Besco, at the Met.

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