Isaac James Richards

POETRY

Word Made Flesh

During a church service on Easter Sunday.

The older sister pokes the younger one
in the neck with a stylus. At first, I don’t
think nail.

  The younger swats it away, a
Roman horse brushes a fly with its ponytail.

Now it’s a game: she draws a flower —
a circle pistil, sunset petals — on her back
just above her square cut dress,

   asks her to guess.

Spells her name, guess. (Grace? Glory?)

I have no sisters. My grandfather died four
years ago. My four younger brothers … The
tip presses the color from her salmon skin,
leaves beige lines that erase their own trace
as comets, a jet’s cumulonimbus trail. Now
a heart. Now, a cross — or is it a t? This, the
first sign: vertical line, horizontal. Origin of

writing. The circle was not first, nor the
triangle. Two crossed lines, carved in mud
or snow with a finger, the image of a human
figure poised to embrace. The sign of a face.

My back, an itch, I scratch,                    why
do they want to inscribe each other’s bodies?
What about the high-tech tablet fails?
    Quietly, she flails.

They’re tickling each other now, gentle jabs,
her fingernail spears between her brittle ribs.

My widowed grandma beside me in the pew
has Dupuytren’s disease, her finger tendons
curling closed, surgically sliced with a scalpel
to relieve tension. We played that game when
I was young. She used the eraser end to carve

words in my palm.

Those girls want to touch tip to skin as quill
to rawhide scroll. I forgot, that was all history
had: body, skin, bone. She drags the point across
her sister’s spine — I see my dead grandfather,
his discectomy scar.
    We can’t get close
enough to each other. My brothers and I can’t

get close, the bluebells on her white dress, the
purple bow in her brown braid, the plastic
pearl necklace, these two virgins. The game
works because one cannot see
  while the other touches her.

I suppose that some readers might say:
unless I see
the messages they’re writing
in invisible ink             I will not believe.

The body, a tabula rasa for touch me and
meaning                                                   see.

One day those girls will learn
   faith
  is not a game.
Belief, what we feel. If I said touched you’d
know I meant the kind without any touching.
As in, I was touched by those girls. The mark

of a scourge
  faint, fading
written on the fleshy table                             .

Pilgrimage

I did not expect to be rummaging around in rubble.
Nobody said so, but I soon realized that every holy
place near Jerusalem was a pile of rocks. King David’s
capital? Rock pile. Capernaum? Rocks. Bethlehem?
Even fewer. I knew the temple was gone — not one
stone left upon another and all that. But try picturing
a palace from pebbles. I guess that’s why we say ruins.

Day five — all I can see are stones. Streets of stone,
walls of stone, pillars of stone, altars of stone. Even
invisible stones. The stone Jacob slept on. The stone
Moses smote. When I asked for bread? Another stone.
Hearts of stone, tables of stone, the stone cut without
hands. Stones that immediately cry out. Command
stones to be bread, lest thou dash thy foot upon a stone.

I could be didactic. The scriptures are soaked in stone.
Build your house upon the Rock. Stop throwing stones.
Unless you are David facing Goliath with a sling. Know
the difference. How to avoid the rock of offense. When
to raise your Ebenezer. He can, after all, raise up children
of Abraham from these stones. But must I see to believe?
What did I hope to sight-see in the Holy Land? A vision?

By the end of the tour, I’ve learned to see through stone.
Molten out of the rock, sixteen small stones — white
and clear and smooth as transparent glass. Stones that
glow. Under a stone of considerable size, two stones in
silver bows, deposited in a stone box. A white stone,
whereon a new name is written. Seers. Stones. Meaning:
see spiritually. See an angel sit on the stone rolled away.

Isaac James Richards is a PhD student at the Pennsylvania State University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Aethlon, Amethyst Review, Constellations, Dialogue, Ghost City Review, Jet Fuel Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Red Ogre Review, Stoneboat, and elsewhere. He is also an alumnus of the Plough Young Writers Weekend and a Pushcart Prize nominee.

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