Zoe Schwab - semana santa

they're waiting to see jesus carried down the street on domingo resurección so eager and longingly like he's a lover coming back from war he rides through the crowd stiffly propped on the float rocking back and forth on the shoulders of the men underneath finally he rests to let them kiss him mouth to handkerchief to wood crying tears of dried glue on a bed of violets their peinetas drip a sad venom down yards and yards of black lace gorgeous scorched spider webs these women so hot with lamentation fiercely mournful paying respects to him and the side-effect clothes pins and hair pins and pin-downs on the bed across the hall from where their children sleep with tapas still in their stomachs churning around in time with their dreams they bear the cross of what it meant to be a woman especially the big ones heaving around their weight like they were walking waist-high in water the gravitational pull of mouths painted brightly like fresh gashes

Zoe Schwab

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/semana-santa/