I told Jesus When I was afraid

as a child, I looked for pictures of you in the encyclopedia and circled them
around my bed. 

Jesus said, I remember Giotto, Cimabue, Fra Angelico. I remember the bells as
Duccio’s Maestà was carried into the cathedral. 

I told Jesus, I asked you to lift my gayness from me, laid down on my face in 
front of the altar at All Saint’s Church on West Fort Street in Detroit. I was 
nineteen, it was 1975, midnight and the tiles were cold. 

Jesus said, I remember asking you Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten 
the drops of dew? 

I told Jesus, for thirty years I asked you to send me someone to love, and then 
Stephen came and we married, but we were old, so I begged you, keep us alive, 
let us live a little longer. 

Jesus said, I remember I remember I remember the poem of you 
that I sent to the empress with a branch of flowering. 

Patrick Donnelly | I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say
Contents | Mudlark No. 61 (2016)