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<\/p>\nBy JoAnna Novak.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Do not be afraid. Every Virgin has to trawl, even if it is many years, Mary of tears, black curls, white face. Eyes like a moll. Humpress of pyres. She left for her Marian tour in 1954 and came back altered.<\/p>\n
But me?<\/p>\n
Am I garbage? I ask in a car in the lot of a hotel that was once an older hotel but will always be named for a saint. Wine before fire. Lie burnt face. Dream, robe, wife. Bore to better bathos. So sorry. There wasn’t a tub in the suite: you pre-booked. There wasn’t a suite in the suite, it was a room.<\/p>\n
(I lifted up the bedframe and put it down on my foot. Unsweet.)<\/p>\n
These days, fumes are weak, the exhaust tame as filial incense. Windows, though, work.<\/p>\n
For shown and seen and seeing, spermed and spumed and strangulated, taken for queso and, covertly, heaps of tapestries in a loft off the plaza, me: a parade of blanket sales before the governor’s palace.<\/p>\n
Wherefore others were poisoned: I got presents for my shots. And then, purportedly immune. And needle-squeamy, no worse. Well. Hale. Hardiness herself. Once I strepped twice and won two dolls, Rapunzel and Guinevere.<\/p>\n
A sword, a braid, a velvet parade, Mary, Joseph, babe in a manger.<\/p>\n
The angel beats her wings and spans
\nher arms alone in the bathroom to get thinner.<\/p>\n
It is God’s will and grace, the first Virgin’s hour.<\/p>\n
Now stub your toe on the altar. Sprain your ankle marching to Eucharist.<\/p>\n
I am\/was\/will be\/had been\/was being\/could be\/would be\/should be unafraid.
\nTo sit in a car and throw my keys in the snow. The cold blazes. I am old
\nenough to know the desert isn’t always sunny, but still.<\/p>\n
Mess with the Church, you get Stravinskied. Doubt a demiurge, binged with pizzicato. Pope and punishment. Midnight in the garden of priest and evil.<\/p>\n
Oh my my my. It was funnier without me. My lover was happier in his own alcohol. Knee-deep in marijuana. Could’ve volatized for hours. He would keep a bloated house, a better house, no bitter wife.<\/p>\n
Mary, give me penance.
\nA hot tub at 10,000 feet.
\nA cold plunge.
\nA sauna screw.
\nCar so hot, hoops brand my neck.<\/p>\n
Little Virgin at the Basilica grows courage.
\nShe falls from her shelf like jacaranda.
\nPlummets like a plum off a branch.<\/p>\n
Enough!<\/p>\n
The congregations, the kerchiefs, the anklets. The mantillas, the rosaries, the racecars, and homiletic fat, the blab and the hearse, the chalice, the paten, the relics, the saints’ lank locks.<\/p>\n
I am the woman not lying, just living. Flinching. Twilight, I’m waiting.
\nIn a forgiven future, the hot tub timer chimes.<\/p>\n
The Virgin would love a girl soak. To laze underwater. To be carried out with the cum-crusted towels like a dead bird.<\/p>\n
And yet, I turn off the car and sit a moment, wait on the fog
\nto clear from the windshield, will a tomorrow sinned by isolation.
\nI palm the vent, shake my keys.
\nI’ve brought a room card, of course, and learned nothing
\nbut how to come, sweating.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
ABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong> Do not be afraid. Every Virgin has to trawl, even if it is many years, Mary of tears, black curls, white face. Eyes like a moll. Humpress of pyres. She left for her Marian tour in 1954 and came back altered.<\/p>\n By JoAnna Novak<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":95607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nonfiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95554"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95610,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95554\/revisions\/95610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nJoAnna Novak<\/strong> is the author of the novel I MUST HAVE YOU and the book of poetry NOIRMANIA. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, BOMB, Guernica, and other publications. She is a founding editor and publisher of the journal and chapbook press TAMMY.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"