The Diary of Mary Magdalene: Poems from Christ's Wife

At the Foot of the Cross

Weeping wood, burls of blood, I see an arc of ancestors,

a Jacob's Ladder from my Jesus' brow, back into Avram's

bosom. This tree without leaves will bear only gory fruit.

Water and wine, and these punctured feet I clutch, oh how

visceral the silver nails stab into Godly flesh, moldy bread.

They will say I was taken up by angels and did not putrify.

But penitent in the desert, I was a corpse, and my seven

devils taught me philosophy, arithmetic, divination, magic.

There is always a Sorceress at the heart of every story, a

prophetess, whether Daughter of Zion or Morgan Le Fay,

and at Bethany in my sister and I's house, Martha baked,

and I listened to Gospel, and I anointed with myrrh saved

for three years, cost a fraction of the tribulation to come.

And now the angel of my better nature is suspended between

what is and what is not, and I am Eve in his skin cloth, wasted.

I will drink my fill of Him in time, but grow old and cold.

At the foot of the cross is a shadow, it says, be fruitful and

prosper. But mine is a covenant of wicked delights, found

at epileptic fits and bipolar highs and lows, and only cool

hands of thunderclouds can ease my sorrows, in his Death

and Ressurection, there was a voice of mice within me: oh

Miriam: be bold. Live like Gabriel's trumpet is lowing, take

your words as swords and preach in the desert, they will

call you a whore and heretic, but my Qadesh was my goddess

once, and I Michael tell you, better to have tasted the parting

of love and buried your father, brother, and son, then to never

know the shadow of the cross.