the divine burlesque

Our Father,
who art in heaven,
is a god/man of juxtaposition--
He lay lion next to lamb with the same
sleight of hand that wrought
Paul out of Saul and
Eve from Adam,

and I cannot help but wonder,
when He, transcendent ether,
became concrete, donning human skin,
was it sarcasm thicker than angelic choirs?
had He, being bored by that neverending day of rest,
become jealous of Kevin Smith?
did he, too, want to make humans laugh?

or was He flirting with us,
having realized rage and worldwide floods
were not becoming of His name?

was He getting coy,
slipping that miniskirt of jesus
up His bronzed loins and
shaving the hairs of deity from
His now-contingent legs?

or perhaps He's just perverse,
making a mere burlesque show of His world,
cross-dressing incarnationally,
and selling tickets to the equally bored seraphim.

why I am not a female poet

so it's true,

I cannot write of menstruation
with words darker than the blood itself,

I cannot recycle the image
in patterns of lunar months,

I have no tampon to point to,
to prove to you my afflictions,

and my breasts never grew,
no training bras restrict them.

And the taste of cock is foreign;
I cannot therefore conjure up the steed
or the rampart
or the omnipotent sadistic hebrew god, prick in hand,
chest bared, gorilla-like,
celestial rapist summoning floods to ravage a virgin earth.

And I have no metaphors--
no similes--for incest,
weight gain, sluts, or hymen--

I am silent as the hymen
when it comes to its being split.

But mainly,
honestly,
I think it's the penis dangling pink between my legs.

That just might be it:
my genitals get in the way.