Mercedes
Sosa and Misa Criolla;
the wind
outside frigid, blustery.
Pan-pipes
bring the Andes into my
high-ceilinged
bedroom.
The front
door rattles.
Good Friday
is roaming outside
my house.
Once, when
young, the poultry farm shriekings
on Good
Friday morning
were the
howling ghosts rising up from their graves.
At my First
Communion breakfast,
I vomited
saveloy and raspberry fizz-
why wasn’t
it the body and blood
of little
Baby Jesus?
The hymn
they sang made me sick inside,
it was so beautiful,
and life so
transitory,
the light
on our mothers’ faces
supernatural-
a chrism.
Though, now
I understand,
it was
ordinary motherlove,
not the
Transubstantiation.
Misa
Criolla fills me
with the same fearful beauty-
reminds me
of the six-inch spikes on the grille
that we saw
my sister’s best friend behind
when she
became a Carmelite.
Beauty and
cruelty,
compassion
and ugliness,
mixed
together to create una mescla,
a misa
criolla!
A savage
orthodoxy.
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