Lot's Wife In Prime Time

Wheeled out in prime time,

dusted off, make-up girls

powdering her up from crusted

toe to nose, Lot’s wife dug

from the desert, placed on a

sound stage under lights to

amuse the martini boys and girls

and sell a few six packs—here

the aftermath of a sand god

speaks to the masses in a tongue

they do not hear.

Could be Oprah or Maury,

Johnny or Dave—no matter,

any full set of teeth and lacquered

hairdo will suffice.

So Lot’s dear wife sits as a

caked mannequin, camel smile

burnt on for millennia, limestone

ears buzzed by an audience’s

tinnitus, listens to the micro-phoned

questions coming from a crowd

eager to consume a rock woman’s

answers.

Her thoughts ooze out like moss on

stone.

They would fish-hook them from her

frozen tongue.

Her gaze of ages from welded eyes

made cracked crystal by Sodom’s

burned turrets. This the lack of

obedience from the spirits’ warning

of not to gaze on the white incarnation,

solid fog made of mad oranges, blazing

reds, a tiny god’s history-pointing finger

that brought them all here, madly in love

with the heat that they imagined.

Her contemplations from a coral brain

remembering the shock wave cracked-foamed

over her form stilled in flight—cones of

electric light settling over, a stinger that

cannot be pulled.

These words she would hammer together

to make a house for them to live within:

do not believe that the force of history,

of rolled out consequences can be

peeled away, that forgiveness is flaked

stone revealing the core of kindness.

Do not believe that we can gaze

behind and find summer’s solace

choking the rot of autumn.

Do not believe that we are chosen

by heaven’s probability for

immortal glory after the arena’s

sands.

She would like to raise a stalactite

middle finger, but that would not be

lady-like.

All I did, like you, was look.

 

 

--Ralph Monday