Ive seen Church
Ive watched Church
a performance piece across a
creek from one of Californias original Spanish Missions
the drama starred a young man and
a very handsome young woman sitting beside him
and beside them the entirety of
her family as the womans mother served a sumptuous picnic lunch to her
husband
her daughter her other children the
young man
then
herself lastly
the whole while she preached preened her daughter to a womans happy role
in the Church
she set a practised illustrious
example
little sises keen to their elder
sibling
but watching I saw something else
I saw The Father The Son The Holy
Ghost
baiting
their hooks with the flesh of young women baptized in a brass cistern of blessed
water
I watched earlier solemn ceremonies
womens feet washed in tinfolded basins
who then bent to bathe the feet
of others
I gnawed at the bit
I was anxious for the main course
the fullbodied
baptisms
the nine yards of line sinker
the sharpened barbed hook
the young man naked his testicles hanging
her familys hands holding him
fast he didnt fight
they extracted his solemn vow to take
her as his wife under Christian Love and Law and the threat of castration
they were browncolored and somber
and the young man in his dark eyes I saw was convinced
I was convinced
The Father The Son The Holy Ghost
arent fools
or to be fucked with
1958, Friday,
14 8. 15
0045, Day-between-Two-Ts, 19 8.
15
