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published November 2009

David Brennan's work has appeared and is forthcoming in Action Yes, Pank, H_NGM_N, Parthenon West Review, Beeswax and elsewhere. His first book of poetry, The White Visitation, is forthcoming from BlazeVOX books. He lives and teaches in Virginia.

Jesus Wordsworth

by

WORDSWORTH

We speak, no mat­ter what lan­guage, love
In the way of speech
Born again. Speaking I
Am not gospel’s fig­ment,
The unphys­i­cal god. Is it true two
Bodies are needed for birth?
Sacrifice is mur­der.
Virgin is a crip­pled word. Resurrect the form
By which to hate one­self, the word that says
See every­thing. Steal
Life as the way
To being. I stole the sick,
Crippled, dead, dying, ill-done-upon,
Diseased, hun­gry, lack­adaisi­cal
Too-lucky, the unlucky, the dropsy-dumb,
Stole their word and spoke it.
A man speak­ing
Made into a book
Written into no mat­ter
What lan­guage
We now speak
Written
He was

(WORDSWORTH begins to sob. JESUS enters.)

JESUS

Well, Christ, he gave it all he had.

(Rimshot.)