Close, the desert silence brings Him close. Such silence flowered close around me two other times. Once, the day He drove the demons from me, seven demons, each with its own name: Salome, Anna, Martha, Sera, Shrew, Slut, Savage. Again, the day He died, before the earth rumbled with its own demons. This is the blood of our Lord.
Come close, let me finish your wine and my story. So few guests pass my cave. My name is Mary. Though they have called me seven other names. Nothing could have been as mad as the world I lived in before He came close. Into thy hands I commend my spirit. Or is it into thy spirits I commend my hands? These well-worn hands. Those well-worn spirits that fled from me close on the west shore of the Sea of Galilee.
In the rainy season, the Rose of Jericho opens again in Negev. The resurrection plant. I have watched for it every year since His death. Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head. Surely when He wanders the earth He wanders here, close. I had a vision once. Woman why do you weep? Who do you seek? And Peter rushed to the empty tomb. I had a second vision. Blessed are you who do not waver at the sight of me. But no one believed me. I left the fishermen, Andrew and Peter then. Close, the desert silence brings Him close.
Have you brought spices or oils? Bring them close. That I may sweeten once again the body of the dead close by. It is finished. Or grace once again the body of my living Lord. Your faith has saved you; go in peace. So close. I had forgotten how myrrh fills the air with the sticky smell of forever.
Published in: SoulLit
Magdalen’s Sorrow
Have you survived these dry storms, ones that fill each empty space with sand, invading your ears with the cries of the khamsin that blows from the east until you pray your ears soon fill with the silence of sand?
Dry storms that sand cliffs of rock into wombs? Wearing away your skin and the new sin worn like a scar. Leaving you raw and soft and exhausted, while the wind sweeps away all that it can, all you foolishly left outside-- antelope skins stripped of sinew and drying in the sun, your walking stick, and the pouch of water you carry into the desert when the wind sounds your name. With salt, the sand steals even the sweat from your body. . . .
Dry storms take away the sky with its signs speaking of direction and time with light and shadow, until north and noon are lost, until distinctions are smoothed away. . . .
Have you known dry storms that, once the wind is subdued, leave you to dig out of loose sand using cracked fingers, for the sake of the east and the moon? Or storms that, once the wind withdraws, leave you to suffocate in the tomb of a newly formed and ever shifting dune?
The Magdalen series is comprised of six poems, a variety of explorations of form and layout of text on the page. The two included above are among the first prose poems I ever wrote. I felt inhabited by the voice of a woman who lost so much when Jesus died. They are poems of address. She is not talking to herself, but to visitors to her desert retreat. It was my experiment in grief.
My earliest drafts of these can be found in a folder of poems written for an Aaron Shurin class. (Dear Lord, did he give notes! In small black pen, they resemble the explosion of an ant hill.) It is beyond my understanding that when I put together the submission to SoulLit, I did not include both of them.
I don’t remember if Marti Stephen gifted me a copy of Sherwood Anderson’s Mid-American Chants before or after those prose poems. I do know that Interrogation of the Magdalen, the longest of the Magdalen series, began after I read Anderson’s “Song Long After.” He never names the person he addresses, calling her Woman. The poem includes a series of questions which sparked answers in me. In the process, a five-act play came into being.
Interrogation of the Magdalen
Was that all you could do Woman-- loving and giving?
--“Song Long After,” Sherwood Anderson
Act I
Inquisitor: Was that all you could do?
Magdalen: Unravel?
Inquisitor: Do you remember the night?
Magdalen: Evanescent?
Inquisitor: When he cried?
Magdalen: Infinite?
Inquisitor: How did you know?
Magdalen: The water lily bud?
Inquisitor: How could you go that far?
Magdalen: Swallowed?
Inquisitor: How could you stop?
Magdalen: Sexual coming?
Inquisitor: Was that all you could do?
Magdalen: Inevitably?
Inquisitor: Do you remember the night?
Magdalen: Investigating?
Inquisitor: That he cried?
Magdalen: Immeasurably?
Inquisitor: How did you know?
Magdalen: Attitude?
Inquisitor: How could you go that far?
Magdalen: Dying?
Inquisitor: How could you stop?
Magdalen: Dying?
Inquisitor: Was that all you could do?
Magdalen: Dying?
Act II
Inquisitor: Who elected you to serve?
Magdalen: The water lily bud?
Inquisitor: Where’d you get those clothes?
Magdalen: The water lily bud?
Inquisitor: Who made them?
Magdalen: The water lily bud?
Inquisitor: You understand?
Magdalen: Assassinated?
Act III
Inquisitor: Were you ever there?
Magdalen: Senseless?
Inquisitor: On the long grey plains?
Magdalen: Inactive?
Inquisitor: Were you ever there?
Magdalen: Irrelevant?
Act IV
Inquisitor: What were you doing out in the street?
Magdalen: Desire?
Inquisitor: What’s the use in beginning again?
Magdalen: Relations?
Act V
Inquisitor: Have you nothing to offer?
Magdalen: Evanescence.
Inquisitor: But bread and your body?
Magdalen: The water lily bud.
Inquisitor: How long must I wait?
Magdalen: Afterward.
On the rare occasions I go back to it, I cannot resist revising. With this poem in particular I agree with John Kinsella, A poem is never finished. It's one possible point along a diverse set of paths. It's more chaos than it is a straight-line journey from point A to point B.
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