Something my stepfather said to see
if my mother would believe it.
She did. She’s been to the Vatican.
How blessed the Basilica must be
that some tourist’s enthusiastic
hand gestures never punctured
its pillars, Bernini’s baroque
canopy never collapsed by an old
Catholic’s fainting awe. A miracle
the mosaics still marvelous despite
centuries of storms. She was pissed
when he laughed, thought he wanted
to make her seem stupid, gullible—
I only believed you because
I love you, she said weeks later when
he repeated the story to his bandmates.
Who doesn’t want the world to be
made of softer material? Who isn’t
waiting for truth to transubstantiate
the hours spent scrubbing
sticky spaghetti from the pot.
Say the statue of David is
swiss cheese, wouldn’t you want
to bite a sculpted thigh
until beauty felt a little less
unattainable? Stick a finger in
the wound of truth
like Caravaggio’s Thomas
fishing around in Jesus’s flesh,
tell me what you feel.
