Christ, Head Shaved, in Aviators
bagatelle
Christ, Head Shaved, in Aviators
As I sat up in bed
this morning
I saw him that way in a left-over dream, domed
and deeply tanned
like an Iraq war vet, not bearded but
stubble-faced,sweating
behind aviator shades, wearing a ballistic cammy vest
over an olive drab tee shirt
a Beretta service automatic strapped
to his thigh.
And he's standing on the shore
of the Sea of Galilee
amid his seated hadjis all
of whom are dressed
in traditional robes, sporting beards, sandals,
long hair, etc., but seem not
alarmed at his odd appearance, and he wastes no
time explaining,
nor is himself surprised at the sight
of a juggler, a sword swallower,
a belly dancer nearby.
"Must have washed up from that Fellini film," he muses,
the one about the whore
with a heart of gold and a name
he can hardly ever spell right.
Which was another thing
about the damn Romans, he thought,
they never took the straight path to anywhere,
or gave their whores
a good Christian name you could put your arms around,
like Mary Maggie.
i spent much of my life
rejecting my name
not wanting to be a james
or the middle one either
which was even worse
but somebody the others on the playground
would see as one of their own
a jimmy or jimmyjo
though even then
i knew i could never be what i thought
they wanted
oh lord whatever it was
something beautiful i guess if not
divine
but there i was
that bucktoothed linthead boy in knickers (why
doesn't that child's mama git him
some braces?) who even
the teachers were forever
calling james because they either
had a jimmy already
or else they could sense that here was somebody who
would never get
his multiplication tables right
or remember which ones it was he had to forgive
his debtors or his trespassers.
James Lineberger is a retired screenwriter. His poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Berkeley Poetry Review, Stirring; Exquisite Corpse, Hanging Loose, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New York Quarterly, Ontario Review, Oxford Magazine, Pembroke Magazine, Sonora Review, Seneca Review, The Cortland Review, Texas Review, Verse Boulevard and Natural Bridge. He won the 2017 New Ohio Review poetry prize.
