Ekphrasis on Nude Selfie as Portrait of Saint Sebastian
Suppose they made martyrs
out of bodies like ours. Found
faith in all our petty miracles.
You woke this morning, drew
breath like a blade from a sheath.
As a child, I learned to never draw
a knife without intending to draw
blood, when my grandfather made me
draw my own. My love, I can’t think
of your body, waking, & not recall
how the morning sky lit up our sheets
in waves of faded red & neither of us
were emptied. By our hands or
a stranger’s. Suppose we might
be made holy & never imagined
ghosts. An iPhone photo’s flicker—
your bare chest held in the dim
bathroom glow, pierced by arrows
of nothing but mirror-spread light.
Bead of biopsied scar, the tender
entrance of a blade. Around your
damp hair wound a rough halo
of pixels. One hand twisting as if
dragged toward a common faith.
Lack of sleep bruising deep
hollows beneath your eyes,
the pale yellow of pollen
-stained lips, like mine when,
as a child, I bit through
flowers, believing anything
beautiful enough—when
swallowed—might stay. The way,
seeing you, I wished I might hold
your mouth, against mine, like
the last embers of the evening sky—
a broken-in Bic lighter’s clear
flame & the sport we made
of holding it to our wrists until
our fear sparked a hotter blaze.
A kind of irony halfway
to faith, all winter I whispered
psalms under my breath through
empty streets. Then, come spring,
I fell for you to the melody of
a Green Day song praising
the messiah of a suburban youth
neither of us had. But goddamn,
the way that one lyric, I’m the son
of rage & love, felt so familiar to
both our mouths—like a bitten
cheek’s fresh copper sting. Here,
your body, always shaking—now on
-screen frozen, poised, just so—how
could I not see, in you, this first
gay saint? Sin of our imagination.
Saint of Soldiers. Patron Saint
of Sickness Healed. Saint of Archer’s
bows bent like boughs mid-storm.
Martyred, slain, & made a prayer
to that which, still living, would
have seen him buried. & isn’t this
the queerest thing about him?
The very pliancy of his legacy?
How a myth glances at the edge
of history, like feeble bulbs burning
feints toward the sun, renders
the body—something between
portraiture & flesh. I kneel before
your image; your ribs curled like
seraph’s wings, stomach cleft by
a flash of pale curls. I whet my lips
to speak your name. To kiss your
hands, curling into the posture
of prayer, they could almost have
been carved from stone. I swear:
If idolatry was my only sin, then
it’s because god wasn’t watching.
