More on: cross

But, if you didn’t notice, there is the cross: / the cross that includes everything as it / excludes nothing

I was fine with the ceramic statues of Mary, flaming heart jumping out of her chest. I liked the bright blue robe, gold stars, and shell-like halo of the Virgin of Guadalupe. But the big wooden crucifixes, that crown of thorns digging into Jesus’s brown locks, skinny white arms yanked above so that he’s pitched forward—they spook me the way Dracula spooks me.

That woman carrying a stone might be understood like this: the Virgin and the Stone:—-to her has been foretold  ————————————the weight of the world. She carries a stone like others their cross.—-A–cross: said to be from this landscape’s newest tree:—artificial tree whose fruit is a natural corpse.—-The stone has the weight ——————————————–of a dead child:…

I just couldn’t breathe in its shadow. It weighed what the cross weighed, that shadow Cross, more than any shadow should. No Sun could shoulder that kind of shadow, No man kneel there without a shudder. The dark beams crushed me flat as shadow, My flesh, grass, matted by the shade. No Way a mere…

What became of the nice pagan girl I married? you complained one morning after I’d found my way to the church down the street and kept walking back every Sabbath. Over dinner you’d quiz me on the sermon, argue with the absent preacher, and me if I defended his BS. Maybe you resented any other…

The morning after the blitzkrieg that toppled the vaults of Saint Michael’s Cathedral and set the rest on fire, a stonemason found among the embers one roof beam laid across another, a kind of crucifix created by the forces of accident and violence and then by grace of eyes that saw in them an order.…