I THINK EMILY DICKINSON
WOULD HAVE BEEN POLITICAL TODAY
by Sharon Olds
Page 14
I wanted to read this one because it's new, and then I thought that this was also an appropriate place to read it. It sort of takes place in the mind of a seven-, eight-, nine-year-old child in a high Episcopal family, Protestant, but almost so you can't tell. And it's called "Christian Child":
I remember the dark maroon of the armrests, real imitation velvet,
the nap that would jerk gently back and forth
under my thumb. I still sucked it,
seven years old, eight, nine,
I remember the soft feathery darkness vast around us, a real
theater, my mother next to me.
I was allowed one movie a year on Good Friday, a three hour movie
because Jesus hung on the cross
from noon to three on an April after-
noon in A.D. 33.
There was no baby, no comet, no cow, no gift.
There was Palm Sunday. The not-man,
almost like a Bearded Lady coming in on the burro,
The Last Supper, family mealtime
tainted and uneasy. That whole family of grown boys hairy and in nightees. The night in the garden.
The name of garden like close sesame.
Everyone else slept but the isolated boy. And then the kiss, as if
every good thing would be taken
and turned to bad. Thirty pieces of silver
like the change in my mother’s purse I took to buy doughnuts. Planetary rings of glazed isolated pleasure. The Roman
shields, swords, thick red shaving brush cock’s combs curved forward
over the soldiers’ heads. And then the king,
washing and washing his hands as if power were a stain
to come off, and the crowd chose the thief.
The brat with the name like Briar Rabbit,
the one who filched coins.
It was all so terrible, wonderful, huge, enormous before us in the dark.
My mother rigid, the crown a cross
between barbed wire and a woven Easter basket,
they set it on his head and pounded it into
his scalp gently, with a wooden mallet. Of course, they made him
carry his own cross through the streets, the way you have to eat the cold food
you left from the last meal before you’ll be given hot. But then they took his
real hand, and held the fingers open, and poised
the blunt point of that uneven spike in the center of his palm
where you can hold your soul, and they hammered it,
the other hand, the way they
crossed the thin parts of the feet
to save a nail. I didn’t get sick; I had a strong stomach.
But something in me had to bend to get the knowledge to my brain,
past my heart, that this was what people do to each other,
the spear delicately opening the oval spear-shaped slit in his side.
When he said I thirst,
like a kid in bed at night and they
raised the sponge like a wet rice-crispy on the end of that long stick and the sponge was soaked in vinegar,
my mouth was open and my
eyes so open my sockets ached--I
held the animal scurf of the armrest
and felt my mother’s body shake
with terrible passion. Then they brought his mother
to the base of the cross. She looked up, up,
up, until she could see her boy.
He gave her to his friend. He turned his head and
spoke to the thief on the cross to his right, This
evening, thou shalt be with me
in Paradise, I heard his deep male voice
and some other noise, some bad mammal sound
in the theatre, a trapped hog cry
that was coming from my own mouth. It is finished, he whispered,
and then, thank God, he died.
Loud music, violins, horns, the lights came up.
I saw my own hand on the dark red velvet.
I saw the horrible world. On Sunday, they would find
the stone rolled away from the tomb, his diaper perfectly folded. People would
stick the length of their finger into
the holes in him. He would walk on the lake
easily, sweetly. But now it was Friday,
electric chair day. And first, I had to strip to the waist
from the floor up and wait on the exact center of her rug.
Not today. This was Good Friday.
Only two more days till they hid the eggs, those
beautiful rosy ovals, the chick all chalky oak,
and they gave you a chocolate rabbit for the end of Lent.
I’d start with the ears, solid, something to
grind my molars and canines
against, and then come to the hollow body, one
bite and it exploded.
Fragile, powerful, sweet. A threat, and a promise.
