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Two Poems
by Rich Boucher On Witnessing An Instance of Magick Being Practiced In a Walmart Parking Lot in Providence, Rhode Island And Wondering If It Is Up To Me To Decide What Means Something And What Means Nothing I was coming out of the Walmart when I spied a real and skinny young man with a very old and full long beard wearing a dirty, navy-blue Adidas hoodie (the kind with the many white zippers) seeming to be praying or yelling by himself, or maybe he was yelling prayers, right next to the cart corral where I was bringing my cart after my prolonged bout of shopping. Worried that his mentalness was a danger to me, I slowed down and looked all around me, scanning my surroundings for another corral but the next nearest one was full, and as I turned again towards where the young man was busy shrieking to the sky I noticed it sounded like he was invoking a long serious of powerful-sounding names, none of which to me seemed especially English. His voice rose and I saw other people staring. One heavy lady stared at me like this whole thing was all my fault and we glared at each other hard for a few tense moments, neither of us making a move. The yelling man had spit flying out of his shouting mouth and then I thought I heard the word invisible and he suddenly disappeared from view. He vanished right in front of us all, everybody, but we knew he was still there because he was now laughing as well as shouting. So weird to hear laughter but not see anybody, right? A Mexican woman near me fell to her knees in tears and started praying loudly to God while sobbing obnoxiously. Lots of the word Dios over and over again and then I heard the sound of several men shouting with their afraid voices and someone right behind me screamed where’s your phone?! and I thought a late afternoon in August was a bit too early for midnight on October 31st to already be here. Why couldn’t I move at all. My ice cream was melting in the bag and I couldn’t move at all for what felt like a terrifying, eternal half hour. After Giovanni Bellini’s Christ Blessing, c. 1500 In this painting of the Christ, committed by Giovanni Bellini onto oil and canvas in one of the very first centuries of history, we can see clearly the conclusion to all the cruel punishments and unspeakable agony that the foretold torturers laid down on the Jesus, the symbols of divine aspect after the crucifixion that caused him to lose an awful lot of weight while at the same time keeping a real tight and fit tone, with his pale, alabaster white skin softly reflecting the golds and baby blues of an early morning Galilee farmland sunrise; note the sunshine-ray-shaped brass halo around the head looking all 70’s surfer-like; we can see also Bellini’s studious attention to the details in the soft, gathered fabric of the purple dress or toga or sarong or whatever that is that Christ has on that wraps and covers his slender waist and shoulders while at the same time tastefully yet clearly displaying the wounds and six-pack of the Christ as well as the stigmata in the palm of his right hand, rendered in a muted wine colour to effect; also note the bruises where the soldiers got him good with a hubcap or something. We notice that the world around Christ seems at once sanctified and yet unchanged, with farmers in the background making their way through a pasture while in the foreground we see two little rabbits of two different colours at furious play as though there wasn’t anything especially marvelous about what is happening in this moment in time - we also must take note of the countenance of Christ; a careful observer will undoubtedly remark on what is plainly visible, what appears to be a state of high heavenly irritation, like what the hell did you do to me, you asswipes in the dull pallor behind his blankly staring and yet really ticked-off brown eyes. While we can’t know what Bellini intended by this expression on the face of the Christ, we can guess; we do know that once you’ve forgiven the 77th sin against you, you’ve done all that anyone can really ask of you, and at that point you can basically just have at it and go to town as far as revenge goes. |
Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich’s poems have appeared in Gargoyle, The Nervous Breakdown, Apeiron Review, Menacing Hedge, Cultural Weekly and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others, and he has work forthcoming in Street Poet Review. For more, check out his website here. He loves his life with his love Leann.
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