الجبل بيننا The Mountain Between Us

Advent IV, 2020

sometimes i wonder
if jesus would know Her name
if mary would know that her child
once called salvation
was now just a whimpering cry for help,
the inside strength now performative weakness
showing that we get to g-d
by transcending gender:
social violence erasing the feminine.
again and again.

sometimes i wonder
why the masculine and none
destroy Mystery
with a sexualized Mary and a white-ass baby crowned with halos and hot wax;
hiding those cracked nipples suckling a newborn babe.

i mean, we see only the right brown people in the manger-
not the wrong brown people
who built it.

(don’t worry:
(the baby will be white by april)

sometimes i wonder
if we ever learned anything from the carpenter’s daughter:
rabbi salvation-come-to-earth who built the house-on-the-rock.
her mother patient, resistant, ever bargaining with g-d for Her Child.

sometimes i wonder
if we ever really paid attention
or if we were too busy transitioning
from salvation
to cries for help
we don’t actually want.