Christ and Magdalene (with quotations from Wuthering Heights)

For Rich "El Profe" Villar

By Raina J. León

Saliva slick finger rested forgotten on my knee
pages would not turn alone
he read heavy words to leap into my loom
weave a piece of him
to wuther is to put one’s hand under glass in noonday sun
flesh burn to bone for hours
how he loved me
how he pushed heaven heights until
            “the rainy night had ushered in a misty morning”

time was time, stealing mechanic joints still vibrating
to fill dusty clothes from lovers
long gone and never coming back
we tussled salt lost to powdery clean
I gave him my quiver, he gave his open mouth in moans
prayers to his father in the other room
humming a respirator song
             “I put slight faith in his own affirmation”
a man is as constant as the devil on holiday

return is a promise
to lose himself again in tangles
my hair the only bondage he ever loved
frizzed dry, rough, bed-misshapen
he kissed thick strands, called them silk
closed my eyes with his lips he left me
with no picture of him
            “temporary brooks crossed our path”

if sorrow has a name I would take it on
cut his voice from my ear
like Bedouin women hack hair in mourning
rub my body in red
coral to make skin break for rivers
cloak the scars in burlap and itch
            “my feet were thoroughly wetted”
his cleansed by desert sand

            “I was cross and low”
I'll be the cross, lowered
if he is where I land

Copyright © Raina J. León. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the author

Raina J. León, member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, is currently a doctoral student in education at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She has been published in the Gival Press Anthology, Poetic Voices without Borders, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, AntiMuse, Farmhouse Magazine, and Furnace Review.

Copyright © 1997-2004 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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