My Dream: Jesus, Wilderness, Satan's Sweet
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- My Dream:Jesus, Wilderness, Satan's Sweet
Maker, Whoever You are (Who are You?), I wish You would unknit my flesh, speak me back to ashes—You can do that, can't You? My dream: Jesus, wilderness, Satan's sweet blues as he stands next to baby brother (yes, I said it), spirit, the trinity— O etcetera and Satan erupts but not before dusting his wingtip shoes. I know what's coming: Faith in wrists uncut? Show some power, Jesus, I'm feeling used. Can't You take back my gut string memories? Did You think this was the life I would choose? Now I'm Satan, mad, clicking his clean teeth, strutting his damned pimp stroll, arrogance, sin. Speaking on some childhood night, torn, bleeding. No nostalgia, a loved point stressed again, but Daddy memories pacing his tongue. This other son—what was his real sin? I should trust a God who would kill his sons? Ah yes, now I sin, but can't hide from You. It's me—no God or devil or Your loved one. It's me now, Maker, giving You the blues. My bargain: take it, take the night away and I promise You praises—You can't lose. And if You be Maker, but You won't say— Whoever—then crumble this easy flesh (no bread). Close my eyes to the broke down day.
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is author of two books of poems, The Gospel of Barbecue (Kent State University Press, 2000) and Outlandish Blues (Wesleyan University Press, 2003). Some of her new work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Callaloo, Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, and the anthology These Hands I Know: Writing About the African-American Family. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Oklahoma and a book review editor of Callaloo.
