by Patrice M. Wilson

That is no way to treat a body,
lashing the back’s tender flesh
with whips they say glass was attached to.
Then forcing it to trudge
under the wooden weight of its own death
through the dull city and up to the place 
of  skull and bones, the horrible pointed metal
through the wrists, where arm and hand
meet to greet stranger and friend,
and through each foot
that humbly bears the brave weight
of life.  Then the hanging, sagging of the head,
the naked cruelty of it all.

Yes, there had to be a resurrection,
that final rebellion, that fatal punch
to the brute gut of death,
restoration of fragile flesh 
to fragile flesh.  Even the atheist
wants to believe this: that anyone
inflicting such atrocities
should be utterly dumbfounded,
that the body should be,
at last, triumphant.

Born Catholic in Newark NJ, raised in Catholic schools, Patrice M. Wilson has a PhD in English from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, having earned her MA there and her BA at the University of Maryland, College Park. She was editor of the very fine Hawaii Pacific Review for 16 years while teaching at Hawaii Pacific University. She has three chapbooks of poetry with Finishing Line Press, and one full-length poetry collection with Christian publisher eLectio Publishing. Dr. Wilson recently spent five years in the cloistered Carmelite monastery in Kaneohe, HI. She is now a retired professor living in Mililani, Oahu, HI.