Portrait at Faiyum

 

she contemplates a different world
and balances her mind
between hot clamor days
and dark darker darkest tomb

poses for a mummy portrait
needful for her afterlife
artist laid upon a plank
with warm lumined beeswax strokes
catching her alive and pensive

she foresees her body wrappings
redolent with almond oil, palm wine
and pine resin for a sealing

mourns a desiccated body, natron shriveled
bereft of brain and liver…womb
identities … all canopic jarred to ancillary

tastes bitterness at the thought
of priests touching still-ed magic
from the even tempo of her heart

and now her pulse and sweat
and tear washed eyes
and eyes…and eyes

see through from being
and a slipping plane to plane

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artist Unknown
Woman’s Mummy Portrait, 70 AD
Hawara, Faiyum (Fayum) Basin

sky pilots

 

where alpine oxygen is scarce
blue phlox taproots through the talus
for nourishment… a bare existence;
the air is iced and once ached my breathing
of the urine stink of dense flower bloom
no matter…its common name is sky pilot

and chaplains who pray over airmen flying
frightened into battle are tagged…the same
along with  those…you’ll have stars in your crown
pie in the sky holy men preaching more in poverty

and Greek sophists…if ever there were sky pilots
rarefied…planting pure idea…insinuating soul seed
piercing blue sky fancy through rifts in adamantine…
oh…implications of a nothingness chill me to the bone

 

Bonnie Marshall

Painting by Marc Chagall
“Le Ciel Bleu”

For Their Deserving Notions

she told me…
she…being my Mother…one day at Church…
never to place a book upon a Holy Bible
and her caveat stays me…to this day,
though not like The Ten Commandments
that I should not break…for the No Book
on Top caution was Her bent, not mine

he told me…
he…being a law student Prince from Africa
that his Father…the Kisi tribal King…told him
his oath on a bible in a British court was illegal
for it’s someone else’s foreign sacred thought
yet…a Human Blood Oath…now That to him
was Holy…not indifferent like a beer oath, or
one sworn with chicken blood, depending
as they did, upon individual intent

on occasion when I shelve my Books
aged faintly aromatic vanilla almond hay,
the ones I cherish near me place to place…
their sweet fragrance on occasion keys my
Saturday remembrance of Mother…me…on
Communion Service duty in a damp Church
basement breaking shortbread wafers onto
silver plated trays…and pouring  grape juice
into tiny plastic cups

I drank the Blood…I ate the Body

my Mother banished me

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Welsh Dragon

consequence for tourists

 

so…it remains Church art…enshrined
not vandalized… this well-intentioned
restoration oiled on Martinez’ fresco
when she, Gimenez, a Good Samaritan…slipped
sanctuary doors without due diligence
of those who saw her, hourly, painting there…
curious duality of care and carelessness

she despaired long decades depredations…
of blessings touch…of humid prayers and
incense smoke…disfigurement of mold
compelled her rash redemptive mission
her vision of a holy incarnation

her Christ has matted fur for hair…
His head’s no longer crowned with thorns,
His newly Greek masked mouth…a smudge
His Heaven gaze turned vacant now to viewer stare

opinions still abrade her brash interpretation
with bluster fury admiration wonder ridicule despair
for it’s now famous infamous to paying curious crowds
who flock the tourist shrine and facemail selfies yet…
there are a few who simply think and smile and kneel
and sigh and pray

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Elias Garcia Martinez, 1930
and Cecilia Gimenez, 2012
Sanctuary of Mercy Church
Borja, Spain

Startlements

Artist: Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1879

Some change is gradual
like mold spores
that bloom to smear unnoticed
in opaque blotches
upon the glass
behind drawn window shades.

Some change is startlement
like a tectonic shift.
We were that…now we’re this.
It registers…quick gasp…
raised chin…wide eyes…
rush of adrenaline.
In out…out in of God.
In out…out in of love.
In out of innocence.

Bonnie Marshall