Our Father

 

Emma MacHugh has been writing spoken word, or “slam” poetry since she was a junior in high school. She and NHS senior Haley Keane recently attended the International Youth Poetry Slam Festival in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of youth gathered to share poetry that touched on a broad range of subjects.

Jesus Christ there must have been a reason why

your followers edited out eighteen years of your life.

 

You must have been too human.

 

You probably sang down the streets of Bethlehem

with your friends, voice a righteous drunken smear

on you immaculate record, alcohol and vomit

a crusted glaze on brown sandaled feet.

 

Yes, I can see why they had to pretend

you never experienced flaw.

Ignored the years when you doubted your holiness,

never wrote scripture on how you rocked

back and forth in your mother’s arms, imploring

why me? why this fated providence

of sacrifice?

 

Jesus, when you finally came to accept it,

did you really believe? Messiah, I beseech you,

tell me; are you really our saving grace?

Were the crusades sanctioned by your smile?

Do your hands ever ache sometimes

under the burden of those bodies piled high?

 

Jesus, all I really want to know is how did you leave

your family? How did you turn from your wife’s

garnet sea tears? Did you run from her arms

so fast your feet left cross-sized tracks

in your wake? Did you forget your children

like my father forgot us? Like luggage

full of gym shorts and love letters

he never bothered to pick up?

 

The Sunday after my father left

my mother dragged us to church. I stared

at a cathedral’s rendition of your glory,

gaunt body strung up like high-top sneakers

snagged on electrical wiring —

and it didn’t mean what it was supposed to.

 

I wasn’t shaken to my knees

in quest for absolution or forgiveness, Jesus,

you were just another adversary,

another man I couldn’t trust.

Only you were held so high up,

I had to break the fists stacked in my spine

just to look at you. And I will never bend

for another man like that again.

 

You are just another father, Lord,

looking for the easy answers. Pluck the sea glass

minnows of disbelief from within my ribcage

and set them swimming past my toes.

You of all people have the strength

to remove the doubt from self, shift

the boulder from the mouth of that cavern

and rise again! Instead, you hang

 

solemn from grey walls, the watermark

over the family portrait of a savior

who just never came home.

 

—Emma MacHugh