G. C. Waldrep

 


Broken Things

You stow them to the rear of worship: bits of jagged iron, 

candle nubs, miscellaneous gears and levers, each perfect 
unto itself but useless apart from its fellows. The human 
back is meant to bear this weight: cable spools, dusty 
vases. Here is a picture of Christ, and here is a picture of 
Christ. Imagine the eyes first, oblique timepieces upon 
which vision prints. I cough up a tooth, mature and perfect. 
It glistens in my hand. The chancel remains locked, 
nursing its treasures with a dim milk. I can just feel the 
tooth resting in the center of my palm; I shift it slightly,
its planes mazing the half-light. Is it broken, I ask myself. 
Is it worship. Every century or four someone scrubs the 
images from the walls and replaces them with new images. 
A fish. A crown. A scythe. See, this special niche for 
books from which pages have been torn. You may open 
and close them: an almanac, a lab manual, a toddler’s
pop-up fable. In my hand I am still holding this single
tooth, which my body offered up. It is not, to my knowledge, 
mine. I imagine the dark chancel full of teeth, a mouth
sewn shut. GO FIND OUT THE ARROW instructs
the legend in the glass, that falls on me. Nowhere is there 
speech or talk of mending. A child’s collage, a cracked
slate. I can’t decide where to leave the tooth: in the Lady 
Chapel, by the font, at the ad hoc altar to war veterans
in the north aisle. The tooth requires neither assembly nor 
instruction. It is a cool kernel in my outstretched hand.
So I swallow the tooth. In this way I turn my back on 
worship. I take it with me, away from the splintered table 
leg, the xylophone missing a key, the saints’ tongues,
the floral wire, old kneelers with their stuffing leaking out. 
Easter baskets, water pitchers. The damaged umbrellas.

John Ashbery

  The New Spirit (excerpt) I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave a...