My Father's House: 4 Poems Edward Madden Sacrifice, revisited And then the son took the father, placed him on the altar of a small white bed, locked the wheels, lifted and locked the rails along the sides. The son took the knife that dropped from his father's hands, took it between his teeth, sheathed: jaw harp, trump, a tongue. Community after a painting of Saint Irene by Leslie Pierce homophobia is a weapon of sexism In Leslie's painting, a woman lifts a lamp inside a cave, the church, its dark architectures of liturgy and stone. She's not alone there, in church or cave, catacombs, or cloaca maxima where Sebastian was thrown. Resist the darkness is her theme. She's thinking of Irene of Rome, fag hag avant la lettre, the one who took Sebastian home, worked the arrows out and washed the wounds, washed his skin, tended him. And later, when the emperor's thugs beat him to death, threw him in the sewers, a group of women fished him out of it, the filth and shit, his body undefiled. Pierced then pummeled, thought killed by arrows and yet was not, later ordered killed again by the man who'd had him shot, pricks then fists (then flushed), the martyr martyred twice, a strange tale, with miracles, too—the blind to see, the mute to speak, but both of these were women, and women tended him, as if there's some connection between the man who would become a gay icon and the women who tended him, the ones whose voice and vision were grounded in some shared sense of who they were and he— who they all might be. The Rapture 21 May 2011 I. Trumpet flower on the ditch, orange blare of blossom over dark water, over the snake that traces the edge of what we know. 2. On tv they say the world will end today, some preacher has the news, but I walk the perimeter of eave and soffit anyway to zap the carpenter bees, the ones emerging from the bored wood, the ones that hover all around the house, bothered, like fat black angels. My father's house 1. This is the body Sundays someone always stops by with the travelling show of crackers and magic juice, the shuffle of little cups from a Ziploc bag—Lord's Supper for the shut‐ins, the sick and afflicted as they say in the ministry lingo. They left behind the empty cups. Washed up, they nest on my dresser, hold the moment when together we had prayer over my father's bed about flesh and blood and something I'm not sure I still believe—but I believe in this: five people around a bed, something shared, a broken body, bowed heads. 2. after the Our Father Father, lying in that narrow bed, I am listening for my name. We know what is coming, we know what needs to be done here, now—and later, when you're finally okay. Mornings, I give you your daily meds. Please forgive me all that needs forgiven, as I keep forgiving you. Later I'll wheel your chair outside for fresh air and a cigarette, this simple thing you want. © 2014 Association for Religion and Intellectual Life
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Nov 1, 2014
Kathryn M Dudley 
Open Access