Inconveniences Rightly Considered

I. The Magazine Jumps Out of Our Hand in Line, Forms Itself into a Mouth, and Speaks about The Meal and The Whisper

  Carpaccio! Carpaccio!

  Oh whereforart our 'Paccio?

  I see the ghoul who's busy

  painting yellowed death

  upon deserted vistas.

  skulls hide under outside kitchen tables

  (mom heath broke the patio table again okay no he didn't it was me this time I was eating macaroni in the windstorm when it flipped which is why there's yellow on the siding)

  skulls there crushed

  the sounds they make

  under the left rear tire

  women receiving back their dead

  shortly after He died, I guess, their dead

  who still look dead,

  who smell so dead,

  whose skin has pulled grey-tight,

  bunny gut,

  desaturated noodles

  who seem to have come to life,

  three cross

  in upper right from

  hanging hanging hanging,

  dead twigs,

  dead figs,

  dead Christ with wounds from

  slicing slicing.

  "There's death in the pot!"

  an apple core from

  chomping chomping

  death in the corners,

  death in the rivers,

  death in obscure figures in the back,

  the one obscured in black,

  but who's that in the middle?

  Who's that by the bark?

  Who sits below the only blooming tree,

  framed by blue waters

  and a slightly-purplish mountain?

  Who is this who sits below,

  the only living color

  in the frame that

  from decay paints Christ?

  His posture – now I know of his posture, I think –

  his posture, have you painted this before

  Carpaccio?

  Is this one of your heroes,

  dear Carpaccio?

  Oh yes, there he is, now closer up,

  with legs still cross,

  The Thinker's posture,

  sitting there before the blooming fields

  beside a throned, lifeless, slumping Christ.

  Is that our Job?

  It's Job.

  Job who knew a pain like none

  of us living knew. Who lost

  his kids, his fields,

  who lost his servants, health, his

  friendships. Why do bad things strike

  good people?

  asketh Elder Job, though deep down knows

  none is good – and he, and he is bad –

  deep down he knows.

  In pain – he cries

  to God – accuses – while accusing

  -- says:

  "I know that my redeemer lives."

  That man, from the close-up of the two

  before our throned Dead Christ,

  now sits in the midst of other pigment

  in the middle ground

  with Christ on a slab

  on Holbien's slab

  with the dead around – and the dead

  have walked – the earth

  returned –

  at the death of one,

  but one is Job,

  who says,

  "I know that my redeemer lives."

  He, who's been full doornail-dead,

  for several thousand years,

  sitting,

  thinking,

  below the only blooming tree,

  before the rivers green,

  beside the blue stream that dips immortals,

  and the melting snow in back.

  Job speaks of promises to keep,

  and miles to go long after we sleep,

  and miles to go long after we sleep.

  His presence there, at the burial,

  at the sepulcher,

  before embalming

  no disassemble

  formaldehyde,

  says so simply now:

  God suffered more in our world,

  than ever we could in his.

  V. Letter to the Editor

  "Methinks it holdeth

  force enough to make one

  find one's faith."

  I. Zine

  Job sits

  and waits–

  –a vigil–

  III. Conversatio

  he will not close his eyes

  he will not close his eyes

  and waiting isn't long compared

  to four or five thousand lives

  waits, he, three short

  time, times, half a time...

  II. The Meal Whispers

  ("I'll let everyone who overcomes eat from the tree of life. To everyone who overcomes, I'll give some of the hidden manna... the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne... through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.")

  V. The Letter to the Editor Appears at the Front of the Magazine

  'weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more,

  For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,

  sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.'

  III. Self-Disclosure Whispered at the Close of the Conversation at the End of the Line

  for in my Christ all death has died,

  for in my Christ my God did bleed,

  for in our Christ God's ever dead

  along with we who die,

  says Paul,

  as often as He rises.

  Hear me:

  I. The Magazine

  Holbien fished a body from the Rhine

  and heard it cough...

  III. Conversion.

  Evermore.

  Holy Saturday

  By T. A. Giltner