.
The pew is the mahogany skin
of a long dark snake.
I sink my fingernail in
waxy scales, hands rake
his bowed arm-rest spine.
The pad where I kneel,
feels like moist frog flesh
slipping along my dry knees
between white socks and pink dress:
meat stretched tight and sealed.
Stained glass hangs
above the altar: ladybugs'
and grasshoppers' bevelled wings.
Light flickers on their legs
like motion, and they prepare to sing.
The christ of beaten
gold on a gray stone cross
is a yellow scorpion,
charged with death frost,
nailed curved toward Heaven.
A. Popp
.