Not Flesh

Not Flesh


He wants to paint the virgin with skin blue
as a stillborn child, as blue as his wife's eyes.
Around their cot, in the earth, their seven babes
wait in line for the opening of the sky. Christ
will come back, the priest intones. But this time,
he will not enter through a woman's flesh.
How would he paint a Christ not flesh
the painter wonders? Will he be stone, the bitten skin
of a plum, a fly's wings, threadbare flaxen cloth,
or a white canvas, so white,
there's no air to breathe?
"Blue skin," the painter thinks,
Mary's face pooling beneath his brush.
An angel caresses his back until feathers fret
and knot beneath his skin, wanting out.