Psalm Against Psalms

PSALM AGAINST PSALMS / Andrew Hudgins Unto the pure all things are pure. God had Isaiah eat hot coals, Ezekiel eat shit, and they sang his praise. I've eaten neither, despite my curiosity, despite my childhood need to test most things inside my mouth. As boys, my brothers and I would pop small frogs into our mouths. They'd crouch in the close dark, then bump against the roofs of our mouths, tickling. We'd brace, try not to laugh, because the winner was the one last to spit out his frog. Actually, as I think of it, this happened not to me but to a woman who told it to me right after I kissed her. But I've thought of it so much I think it is my memory because I wish it were, as I have thought of fire and shit and what they'd taste like in my mouth, those opposite poles of possibility. Children jam the world, hand over fist, into their mouths, but fire only once, shit only once. Even pregnant women, who, where I come from, will eat red clay, not knowing they eat it for the iron, just knowing something drives them out into the fields to eat earth—secret, furtive, ashamed—do not eat fire. Smokers smoke, pulling the fire closer and closer to their lips, but no one, except by accident, pulls it into his mouth. A few professionals pretend to eat the blossom off a torch and then exhale a violent billowing of flame like a soul blasting from the flesh The Missouri Review · 65 that can barely hold it. And I have even heard of a man who, in a darkened kitchen, turned all the burners on and watched orange spirals floating in the dark, shimmering like elaborate UFOs, three feet above the floor. He watched in awe until he couldn't hold back any longer, and he climbed on the counter, and pressed his naked chest against the spirals as if he could embrace the fire, love it, consume the burning and not be burnt. Isaiah ate the ember. Ezekiel ate the dung. It went in fire and came out praise. It went in shit and came out praise. And this is where I stick. I pray: thank, ask, confess. But praise—dear God!— it clings like something dirty on my tongue, like shit. Or burns, because it is a lie. And yet I try: I pray and ask for praise, then force the balking words across my tongue as if the saying them could form the glowing coal, cool and smooth as a ruby, on my tongue, or mold inside my mouth the shit that melts like caramel—and thereby, by magic, change my heart. Instead, I croak the harsh begrudging praise of those who conjure grace, afraid that it might come, afraid it won't. But if grace tore through me and spoke, as God in his strange, redundant way put on my tongue to praise himself, Td hear the words I said and learn why I invented all the horrors of the world, learn why I made people love their hard sweet lives, then added death to give it all intensity. When she dropped food, my mother picked it from the floor, flicked off the grit, blew on it, and pronounced "It's clean" before she 66 · The Missouri Review Andrew Hudgins put it on my plate. And it looked clean to me. I do the same. And when I cut my hand, I jam the finger in my mouth and suck the blood, hot and salty as melted butter. And just last year, a girl, a student, came in my office, sat, and spread three paper towels on her lap. "I want to show you something," she said, and then, slowly, she worked her whole right fist into her mouth. She knew Td be impressed. I was. Tm not finicky between extremes of fire and shit— the perfect spirit and the utter form of earth, the one so pure it sears our flesh, the other so pure our flesh refuses it, expels it, walks away. That's why so few of us are...