God Is a Gator and He’s Watching Reruns
Through Possession
On the news a man holds an alligator like an infant.
In his home there is a jacuzzi tub in the living room
for the alligator to water-rest while the man watches
Gilligan’s Island or MacGyver. At one point
he puts the gator’s face to his own and smooches
it all over like unexpected rain. The gator blinks
his thin lily lids in reception. In considering affection,
I think first of touch then of obsession — I do not
know softness without longing, and although
the alligator is far from soft, his entire constitution
communicates love. My lover collects . . .
perhaps the sentence stops there. I too extend
myself through objects though mine is most of
a gathering, some of a worshiping — talismans
that remind me of my mother or the saint
I believe my mother to be, martyred and mine.
I take a midterm this week in the form
of an office conversation — just the two of us
talking ego, waxing God. The balance is off, the power
in his favor, and every gland of my body sweats
in shame of my self-centered approach to artmaking
— how I see myself inside and in-middle, very little
Lord. He says there is no inside/outside, no self-
separate, that if I am in right relation, if I am in gift-giving,
(and this he encourages, but softly) then I too love
beyond physicality. The alligator could be my child —
Frankenstein’s monster my chance at grace.
I believe my precious things are material tethers
to acts of creative and saving gestures. I did not say this
first, the professor did during the midterm, and because
I hoard quips, sentiments, heart-moments, perspectives,
and the rest — a compulsion to know so much from
so many somatic spaces — I become the light-echo
of a star that died billions of salty years ago.
It makes no sense really no sense no sense
since too much light resurrects the dead,
and if the dead come back,
what do I do with my blasphemous treasures?
Where does the grace go?
And who will tuck the gator in at night?
Midrash While Woman
Genesis 1-3
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