Martha had this thing
about the Crucified.
The image, the cross,
the stretched out arms.

The one in the convent
school along by the chapel
always caught her eye.
Stood there staring.

Get a move on Martha,
the nun said. Don’t gape so.
Or the image in the dining
room stuck up on the wall

above the abbess’s table.
Painted on she thought.
Not the same. Her mother
had the one her mother

gave her on her deathbed.
Old wood and plaster.
The plaster peeling from
the hands of the Crucified.

Martha gaped at Him,
at His wounds, at the wound
in His side where the spear
went in. Forgive them for

they know not. They did so,
the *******, she muttered,
putting her fingers on the wound
in the side. She had an ebony

rosary in her skirt pocket. Black
Christ on the small ebony cross.
She fingered in her pocket, said
the prayers, felt the stiff body

on the cross. Sometimes she
took it out and kissed it; the ebony
body, the head, the arms. Once
she had a cross around her neck,

silver, small, given by some old
codger. She felt it warm between
her small *******. Lost it when she
took it off to wash and it slipped

down the plughole in the convent bog.
She knew her mother had this wooden
crucifix on her chest of drawers.
A dark wood, a fleshy plastered Christ,

nails through and hands and feet.
She kissed the hands when her mother
was out, her lips touching the smooth
plaster, the eyes closed, the feel of

smoothness on flesh. Not the real
Christ of course. Least not yet.
She’d wait her turn. The real thing.
See what death and Heaven bring.