EXEGESIS

Katie Lois Johnson

Copyright 2012 Katie Johnson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1530525470
ISBN-13: 978-1530525478

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments

Communion

Prayer

Genesis

Gospel of Mary

Hymn of Aching

Rosaries

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Archie Edmonds, all other ground is sinking sand.

EXEGESIS

Love, love, love,

Katie.

EDEN
His lips are dripping with forbidden fruit.
This biter broken fall of man, to bite
the blood-red beating body, limp on root
and hide from God behind the veil of night.
They say the curse befell us with the sin
of woman, just another way we bleed.
Sing holy, holy as he enters in,
for it does not become a girl to weep.
Exiled from self, your tongue forgets your name,
a parting of the body and the soul.
Your naked limbs, the emblem of your shame,
a holiness they were not meant to know.
The sins of man have not your soul defiled;
your body still a garden through the drought.

EXEGESIS

COMMUNION
I bite down hard:
Sunday's kiss communion,
a holy kind of broken
Do this in remembrance.
Sunday's kiss communion,
drunk and bleeding.
Do this in remembrance;
I never could forget.
Drunk and bleeding,
this sin was never mine.
I never could forget
flesh in mouth.
This sin was never mine;
a holy kind of broken
flesh in mouth
I bite down hard.

EXEGESIS

PRAYER
I pray to no one;
sing silence to my holy ears like hymns,
gasp gospels at the gaping
whole of me.

EXEGESIS

GENESIS
My womb is undone
in the hymn of your tongue
cradled soft in jaw,
rolling in gentle unbreaking.

GOSPEL OF
MARY
Your body holds him like Creation,
broken for him, bleeding.
You make him in your image;
your mammas nose, your daddys teeth
nestle in tight to his soft jaw.
It hardens. You pray the Lord
to pass over your first born son;
say Sundays he will sing your
praises. He is a good boy. This
wide nose and too-big teeth part
Red Sea; part Promise Land.
Pray he wont wander in deserts,
pray he keeps commandments,
breaks bread of heaven with the
least of these. Know deep that hes
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EXEGESIS

the least of these. Pray he dont see yet.

Teach that boy to build with soft hands;
with a heart towards Jerusalem.
Tell him the Temple is his fathers
house. Have him dream blue-prints;
half-believe you when he asks where
his daddy went.
He no longer believes
you when he asks where his daddy
went, but he dont wanna see your
crown slip. It was the first thing his
hands built.
When they beat your baby, pray
he takes it. They're only looking
for a fight, and he might survive
in silence. As he carries cross to
highest hill, know he is made
Christ for you.
Watch them cast lots,
hear him cry out to his only
father. See them stab side; watch
his Spirit pour red wine.
Drink
in remembrance.

HYMN OF ACHING
May the broken bow
of your bent-back spine
bloom bruise-red hymns
to your holy aching.

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EXEGESIS

Hallelujah
to your bloodied knees,
calloused from crawling;
ribcage splintered in songs
of mourning the raw, bloody beating
that resurrects this wreckage every time.
Glory be
to your blistered palms of holding
the broken commandments of your hips;
coal-singed lips of psalms
like revelations singing:
worthy
worthy
worthy

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie Lois Johnson is a poet-activist located in Atlanta,
Georgia.

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