IMMERSION
After Andres Serrano’s Immersion (Piss Christ), photograph, 1987.
Little here has gone as planned. On the seventh day
I tacked Piss Christ over my desk like a Catholic faggot
even though I am, on technicality, neither. Immersion,
subversion, subtext breaks the crown of cowards.
This move was done intellectually, on speculation,
which is to say I licked my mouth bloody and told the cat
I feared I’d make a poor teacher after all.
If you move, must you not eventually settle? Must you not,
in time, fall peaceful or maybe just dead? I was a decent athlete
once. Not celebrated, but aggressive. This was encouraged
(to a point). It was assumed that violence of mine equated strength,
a nature thus transferable. One day it might be bottled, sent out,
swallowed down, maybe spat defiant like the sun. We like the
American brutal here and I was brutal once in terms understood.
I almost made good on it
but instead I’m here tacking Piss Christ over my desk and
savaging myself inside the coils of my brain. What irony that
the rattle of my skull cuts worse than teeth here. Nonetheless,
I want iron teeth; I want a world where my body
is just my body, a fact of meat and marrow
unbroken, and not some metaphor / mirror /
communion wafer reflection of the soul.
So on principle, you see, my smile is unsuitable and I,
unremarkable strange, hung this piece not like Christ
but maybe like Christ. You can’t escape God in America
like you can’t escape the funeral salt or the gunmetal bite
of your own soul’s bones, grinding down to the nub as teacher
turns away or maybe gives you a pen that one time, like she did
for me with my left-handed ways. I was so small, new to myself,
and I could only write one sentence then, so I wrote it constantly,
motion for motion, so I wouldn’t come away with nothing. Like
sharks, I feared drowning if I stopped, if I came away with nothing to show.
I didn’t know it then but that repetition wasn’t, so she said, a sign
of wrongness. You don’t come into the world knowing these things.
Someone has to show you. She followed that pen with a page then,
or so I imagine she followed.
Point being there was a moment that lingered, tacked in my mind
like the sun or Piss Christ over my desk, that crossroads way
that cuts before to after and again to now. A teacher gave me that once
and so I go again in this place the way all things do at the crux,
at the beginning:
with a bomb, biting at the marrow, undrowning.
I would like to be a good teacher one day.
AMERICAN GRAMMAR
I’ve been thinking about translations and
beauty queens, the universal gone
unique gone away unto we the
people bullshit, we but not you, ghoulish
little monster of you. Again it swings,
all pendulum time. Language to explain or attack
always, and we smooth. We shine. We’re meant
to stay clean. Are you natural? Are you the
right sort of girl? We smooth until we shine or
ought to; beauty come capitalism come
special. I tried too hard or not enough.
I to you—remember me? Ghoulish. Unsuitable.
Anyway, I make a poor translator, worse beauty;
I would like to forgive myself or care less
regarding skin—mine—or smiles—all,
but mine are poor. I cried once because
I-to-you knew I wasn’t pretty, because,
world-wise, I wasn’t punk enough to
smile anyway. Little girl words little girl
tears to this grown-ass bullshit. Shine its words
shine all my funky ass smiles;
never good enough, never free enough, we are
all constructions, I to you to we and many
to the nothing of the universal. Goddamn! We
are unnatural the way cats are, lying under
some strange sun. I’ve been wandering among the
forest and the trees, considering how the book of me
continues. The word of me past the shine, turned
real. Meant to last.
THE STATE OF YOUR SOUL
Starting position: the body is the body made, unmade,
defined by outside forces. A man told me god is the line dividing
society, lest we all murder each other. I have never wanted to murder anyone.
Aren’t you afraid of Hell? he asked me.
Aren’t you afraid of dying empty?
Bodies break under gravity and will, reform themselves in
the aftermath. I tack a copy of Serrano’s Immersion over my desk.
Fear is beyond prayer, beyond pretty thoughts. Years ago, a friend of mine
was gone in three days. A girl with promise. She didn’t come back.
The world rotated on the funeral. Fear is adrenaline on a bridge,
facing strangers in masks; fear is the righteous man who said
I could be pretty if I smiled and gave up the lesbian thing,
if I just tried a little.
(fix your teeth, girl. fix your soul)
Metaphor is transgression is brutal is the unacceptable body laid on the line
is Piss Christ tacked above the desk where I learn to be a teacher.
(smile, girl)
You could’ve swung respectable, I’m told. This is meant kindly.
You have the lineage for it, fighters made good. You might have been
something, a reflection of the investment. We mean well.
Praise god and smile past your rudeness, lest it reflect
on your betters.
Metaphor is that godly man who said faggots were better off dead like pollution,
this in the days when godly men believed in pollution. The body is the body is still on the line
and I cannot escape the men concerned for the shape of my smile. America is on the verge, I
hear, but not because of capitalism.
Consider the body again, metaphor torn beyond the beauty binary.
Consider a person as a person, writing lines, constructing a desk.
Hammer in hand, weight balanced. We are here to build something.
We are here for more. I’ll say fuck if I please, will write the line true
as true can, will exist, will exist, will exist.
EMMA JOHNSON-RIVARD is a doctoral student in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Tales to Terrify, Red Flag Poetry, and others. She can be found @blackcattales on Bluesky and at emmajohnson-rivard.com. Her poetry chapbook, mice inherit apocalypse, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
Read more by Emma Johnson-Rivard:
Five poems in Blood + Honey
A poem in manywor(l)ds
A poem in the New Feathers Anthology