After Mattia Preti of Malta’s The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew

After Mattia Preti of Malta’s

The Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew

Held steady enough, still

the reflection in the cup

tips the way the sky will

when I lean over it too

drunk on vertigo to know

it’s not solid, it’s really

falling up sky.  I’ve been

months from such a stomach,

but even this mug of mud

brown coffee’s enough

to see me looking down

looking up.  If I hold it

at the right length before

I tip it onto my lip and just

below my nose (the steam:

it’s sixteen degrees out-

side is a quiet applause

in this hat- and- scarf

room), I see the Blessed

Mother on a cloud, those

three children, and

a flock of lambs,
some sheep. And one of the lambs
looks at me, completely

ignorant of the lift in the sky, the foot

all flesh on the cloud

completely unshocked

she doesn’t fall through—

because she’s solid as

those two girls and the one

boy clutching one each, his

heart and his shepherd’s

crook.   She’s come to them

and revealed hell

and salvation that nobody

will believe, not for a long

long time.  Why did she

not come to me the angry

tight pious nuns provoke

in their cells at night

while they prod and grope

their unholy loneliness?

But that one lamb.  I’m

remembering the faces that keep

rising up out of Mattin

Preti of Malta’s painting

of the Martyrdom of Saint

Bartholomew, how I’m at first

fixed by his looking up

at the coffee colored sky

that must be illuminating

his skin in some miracle

and I’m surprised I’ve only

recently seen his right

arm, the skin is peeled

right down to his wrist

but how is it the faces looking

through the storm I’ve only

now just…but now I can’t

look at his face at all without

wondering at the silhouette

in the left corner, a slave

maybe taking, the way

an anchor may, the un-

steady but expected weight

of all it’s cast out to

contain, it’s him stuck

in the wind and weight

of the second coming, and

closer on, the rain that clutches (but they’re

off canvas, flexing I bet,

thumb tucked under

the fingers can’t you imagine

it’s nothing but this, that boy,

how is he different looking

at a Jesus disciple from the boy

looking at Jesus’s mother.  Or

more, how are those, the man

and the woman, both known

both thrown to the dogs when

the road’s come to be cleaned

when the sky breaks open

and the sheep scatter, the clatter

of their little hooves muted

as they splash through

mud that just moments

before reflected not cloud

not Mary not Bartholomew

backing away toward Armenia

but instead what can be

said to be called a perversity,

the crowd still gawking, their

faces coming up through

the clouds and mist at the now

saint’s elbow, or the children

the three with their knees

bent and the hovering She

draped and robed in gold,

flesh and bone

but only, brief as skin

with its thin thin protection

its excruciating, like sometimes

reflecting, being blinded,
then coming away.