May 13, 2009 / Creative Writing
I watched Rebel Without a Cause on TV late one college night when I learned …
After resurrection, Jesus acted strange,
materializing through solid wood,
even though he didn’t look
that different. The gashes seeped still,
varnishing the tentative hand, the fingers
that needed to know him new.
Let me say how strange I feel,
trusting this to be true—that a body
can be both mortally wounded and
whole enough to dodge decay,
As though, half-emptied of
corporeality, halfway to heaven,
his hands were still bony enough
to gut a couple lake fish and grill them,
taking multiplication the next step.
Of course, he was always more
than one thing at once—utterly one and
utterly other, now dissolving into
thin air, now re-assembling anywhere
in some new tongue of flame.
Luci Shaw
Luci Shaw is a poet, essayist, teacher, and Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver. Widely anthologized, her writing has appeared in Image, Weavings, Books & Culture, the Christian Century, Relief, Rock & Sling, Ruminate, Radix, Crux, the Southern Review, Stonework, The Other Journal, Nimble Spirit, and others. Harvesting Fog, her thirtieth book, was released in 2010. For further information visit www.lucishaw.com.