"narthex" poems
First glance, I’m a good Christian girl. But dark purple flecks decorate my neck.
In leather and lace I forget to pray and let you do what you want with me
because pain is complex and melded with pleasure.
Do you know what they say about girls that enjoy ***
They never dare to say it to my face but I can feel them staring from the pew
at the dark purple flecks that decorate my neck.
Your hands, more powerful than God, make the earth of my body quake
while I draw fault lines down your back with my nails under the broken
crucifix above your bed. The pain is complex and melded with pleasure.
Deep, growling voice shakes the dusty rosary on your nightstand when we ****
Your handprints are left on my flesh and the hand around my throat
leaves the dark purple flecks decorating my neck.
Coffee in the narthex and I’m labeled a harlot. Sinner. Sacrilegious. Branded as freaks…
Brush it off. I know what you like and how you like me. God will have mercy.
Sensations blend because pain is complex and melded with pleasure
and I can’t have one without the other. To reach our peak
you leave me red, marked and breathless, gasping, “Oh my God.”
Questioning my beliefs with dark purple flecks to decorate my neck,
I know pain will always be complex and melded with pleasure.
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 2:29 PM UTC
a confessional screen
chambered in opaques
the pearly gates would sport
checkers sovereignty with grime
between myself
and the other side of this poem
another acolyte had founted
from our species-widened narthex-maw
the answer to the test
the answer i have tested since
despite the veto of a roshi's sleeve
while adults justify in frowns and threats
commandment-etched
i am a child still
aghast at drawing lines in sand to mark the living
from the soon to die
one i knew who drew such lines
for whom a line was drawn to mark himself as well
not just in votes and homeland hate-speech
you see
he crossed the line
no unadulterated childhood can cross
he shot his own face
or at least his face was shot
when he was found
who can read the final lonely moments of another
when mistakes are easier than ownmost acts ?
bombing bullies politicking death
can sanctify the safe
unpunctuated traps
dividing moods in swallows
pills
swilled with undigested fear
of nozzled death
mercilessly sudden
.
Oct 6, 2013
Oct 6, 2013 at 2:18 PM UTC
i would cry out, give voice my wild rage
if that would loose the bonds, arrest her plight
but cowardice sustains a safer silence
long imbued complacency of guilt
--ensconced escapist narthex ease and shade--
i do not speak the secret all avoid
when speaking it condemns me to a pretense
loathe of self the ears that hear and do not hear
deep cloister of a falsely sacred quest
to give into the hands encompassing us all
which hand it down again, below a conscience
as above removed, vacant as her eyes
Nov 12, 2015
Nov 12, 2015 at 7:44 PM UTC
the narthex; with its shattered stained glass
a beautiful epicenter
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 9:17 PM UTC
There is something about churches—
the sanctuary filling slowly,
brass ***** pipes arrayed like halberds
in a medieval arsenal,
stooped ushers handing out programs
as the congregation
accumulates softly
like snow.
And the pulpit—like a queen
in a hive of wooden pews
all of polished walnut,
stands hushed and expectant.
(I know within that pulpit
there is a place to put cough drops,
a legal pad, second pair of glasses.)
Sanctuaries have a peculiar smell,
redolent of potted lilies,
Youth Dew perfume,
aging hymnals,
the suspired breath
of five hundred faithful
lifting their voices to that soaring
Byzantine dome.
I was glad for your presence that day,
the sound of your marvelous
voice, the warm sense
of your shoulder next to mine.
You cradled a hymnal
benevolently in your hand
as though you were baptizing a child.
"Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia!"
I sang more loudly, I suppose,
for gratitude that you were with me.
I held my hymnal with more care,
sang and looked up more hopefully
to that pulpit than I might otherwise
have done on any given Easter.
I prayed more ardently for good things to happen,
thought more kindly of the man
beside me who wouldn’t make room
when we three entered the pew
but stared blandly ahead as if
waiting for an opera to begin.
When the minister spread his arms
in benediction and bade us all go in peace,
we stayed to hear the postlude
and watch the Easter crowd
wind its way to the narthex
and spill out into the boisterous
parade on Fifth Avenue.
I sat there and listened with you
as the organist played his sonorous farewell.
When I was a boy sitting next to you in church,
you might gently pat my thigh
when the organist’s final note
passed through the sanctuary
like a great bird in flight.
You would smile as if to say,
“You made it through the whole service!”
On this Easter, when the hymn began,
and the mighty ***** notes swelled around us
like God’s own voice in song,
it was the thought of your shoulder near mine,
your hands upon the pew,
that halted my singing for a moment,
to let a silent bolt of longing
pass through me
like a solitary dog crossing a road.
Then it was gone, the thought,
but so, too, was your palpable nearness,
the idea of your voice
ringing through the church
like a celebration.
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 4:45 PM UTC
Palm Sunday in Egypt
9 April 2017
Revelation 20:4
Poor bleeding Egypt, Mother of martyrs
Whose sands receive the gift of sacred blood
Almost without an end: the Apostle Mark,
Saint Katherine, and even on this day:
A child in the narthex scampering about
Although his mother told him to behave
A man waiting for a friend, passers-by
Someone hoping that the sermon is short
O may they now with Christ enter into
Golden Jerusalem, now and forever
Apr 10, 2017
Apr 10, 2017 at 7:27 AM UTC
Thine fligertoch froznen ech
Cucenkis chenches n xylomec,
The shlipless splood
Upon thy frosh,
With deutromic flide
and fligertosh!
O durgling narthex
And dushi dift,
Of birken shlip -
Those liqulor cractles!
Jugnot (that ye be not jugged),
Boxinuts of bumten quaggles.
Aug 12, 2014
Aug 12, 2014 at 9:26 AM UTC
Between the lychgate and narthex lay
a limbo approaching communion,
where one can linger at the border, sitting in the margin
with enough of a toe hold on tentative worship,
while insulated from the assembled fervour.
And Arthur prayed alone:
conversant with his God,
but wary of the draw of the warmth within
and the risks associated with human contact.
Aug 17, 2025
Aug 17, 2025 at 12:44 PM UTC
“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,
and the *** the master’s crib….’”
-Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas
The ox and *** are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights
And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy
Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and *** are in the Stable set
Dec 25, 2018
Dec 25, 2018 at 10:27 AM UTC
“And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes”
-Chaucer
Everyone is a palmer this holy day
Seeking the strange, elusive shores of truth
Each pilgrim bearing in his eager hands
A palm frond and a photocopied hymn
The pilgrimage begins in the parking lot
And marshaled by the blue HANDICAPPED signs
Ascends to the doors, the narthex, and in,
Up to the Altar, there where all worlds meet
Come to Jerusalem; you’re on the way -
Everyone is a palmer this holy day
Mar 25, 2018
Mar 25, 2018 at 7:47 AM UTC
Labyrinths and crypts of cold stone
Ever shifting and strange
Led me to that forgotten chapel
I stepped inside its narthex
Distant and remote
A place only dreams might reach
It was always night there
In the sanctums of that place
Every trespass palpable
Yet the darkness was not consuming
It seemed stagnant and moribund
Weaving vainly around the pillars and pews
Stripped of the fear that darkness brings
It lulled about aimlessly
Trapped within those rotless walls
Waiting for the return of the light
Jul 16, 2017
Jul 16, 2017 at 1:38 AM UTC
But the Animals were First
“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,
and the *** the master’s crib….’”
-Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas
The ox and *** are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights
And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy:
Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and *** are in the Stable set
Dec 24, 2017
Dec 24, 2017 at 8:41 AM UTC
But the Animals were First
“We read in Isaiah: ‘The ox knows its owner,
and the *** the master’s crib….’”
-Papa Benedict, The Blessings of Christmas
The ox and *** are in the Stable set
In service divine, as good Isaiah writes
A congregation of God’s creatures met
In honor of their King this Night of nights
And there they wait for us, for we are late
Breathless in the narthex of eternity
A star, a road, a town, an inn, a gate
Have led us to this holy liturgy
Long centuries and seasons pass, and yet
The ox and *** are in the Stable set
Dec 19, 2016
Dec 19, 2016 at 9:30 PM UTC