Wow, here it is - Poem Bowl Number Ten! We're in the third round now, won't be long! Thanks again for helping me out with this. It's been fascinating to see what people are interested in.
Wovoka Gets His Hollywood Star
Matt Quarterman
The prophet is of no lasting matter,
but only the message, the living words.
Among my people (O my people)
we make our history in repeating these sounds.
Distrust the words murdered in the inscribing!
My name is written on this stone plain
awaiting my hands.
The Ghost Dance sweeps itself into corners,
until the great wind will spread us again.
I am overshadowed by the silent spinning
of the film reel, the nickelodeon’s wheel.
I press my knees to the concrete
as if crouching in prayer at the feet of my ancestors.
Silver messiahs incarnate every year,
after-image spilled in the darkness.
These flicker through their shadow-play
as I stand behind and make straight the way of the star.
My breath fills my nose, enters my lungs
and I exhale, planting palms in the warm, wet mud.
Christ in the Wood
Matt Quarterman
He’s a surreptitious kind of savior,
almost a wallflower in his messianic way.
His silence frightens me,
coming as it does from
a man so alone in the dark.
He is not gloomy or menacing
but simply blank;
ribs poke out from his alabaster body
like tent poles
stretching out canvas.
And perhaps this torture has become casual,
I explain; his outstretched arms
convey just a shrug.
His head lolling to the side seems
almost sleepy.
The wooden structure frames him like a picture,
a portrait of nonchalance in the face of sacrifice.
After all, he has been here a while.
Perhaps saddest of all is his rootedness,
the feeling he is caught, transfixed to the spot.
It gives him some hint of nostalgia or
the feeling of return to a town that’s unchanged.
The one thing we can know with certainty and no doubt
is that this is a Christ who will never come down.
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