Born Again
Michael McManus
Of all things to signal the end, clarify its position, it was nipples,
yes nipples, the heavy, industrial types swollen against a tight
tee shirt, or teasingly dark beneath a sheer blouse.
Forego the lacy uplifts, I had told her, give me blood simple flesh
with no constraints, a chance to praise your prime past thirty.
She called me sick, perverted, began wearing Victorian dresses, &
covered her breasts in concrete bunkers, hired gunners
to guard their flanks. And then the bible became her amphetamine.
It fueled her renaissance to habitual prophet. She shot
John under her toenail, Luke in her right arm, and then her heart
pounding, face flushed, pupils wide and roaring, cried out to warn me
that the flames of some monolithic hell circled about my feet.
I began to believe the apocalypse approached, so each day I kept
a vigilant storm watch on the horizon, and wondered when lightning
flashed and our anger rolled from the bed as thunder, if this was the end?
I hate to blame it on religion, so for Christmas I bought her a gold
bound bible, and plenty of Victoria’s Secret. That was six months ago.
Now it’s late August, outside the temperature scorches the landscape,
inside I drink Irish Catholic beer. She sleeps on the bed in a cotton
sweat suit, legs crossed, arms folded, her needs all prim and Protestant.