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SAM TAYLOR
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  • [Books]
    • The Book of Fools: An Essay in Memoir and Verse
    • Nude Descending an Empire
    • Body of the World
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                                          [poems]                  

​from Body of the World
Originally published in Florida Review
 

JOHN 3:16

 

The perfection of God that rose 
                        Jesus out of its body also put forth
two Mexican girls, four and five, running alone
                        down a city street, a wind of white dresses
and red ribbons, hair as fine as black water--
                        shouts leaping halfway down the block--
then the mother rounding the corner
                        behind them, shaking her head, “They wore me out.”

A streak of laughter now.  But it could be
                        one day mother will be roasting corn
and an uncle will lead one of the girls
                        behind a shed — a birthday present he says --

and before she knows how to braid her hair
                        or ever hears of Shakespeare, she will tear
her face to shrapnel in the mirror, follow
                        any boy who curses down an alley. 

That’s why he’s on the cross.  Not for one sin
                        or another, but to show the nature
of birth, to tell himself — his children — the price
                        of existence.  Because God so loved the world,

he wanted to be a girl with red ribbons,
                        a blue Minnie Mouse watch, even if then
he had to forget, to live amongst all the forgetting--
                        the tv talk show, the uncle, to watch him each day
through the smell of corn.  Because He so loved the world,
                        he was willing even to be that fat man
lying on the couch eating chicharones,
                        scratching his balls, chafed red from the quarry,
because the white light just goes on forever.

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  • *
  • [Books]
    • The Book of Fools: An Essay in Memoir and Verse
    • Nude Descending an Empire
    • Body of the World
  • [Poems]
  • [About]
  • [contact]