Annette Spaulding-Convy

Bonsai Nun

        It can happen when a god loves
           you too much. He answers prayers
                       with a simple slate tray,
                              a pair of jin pliers, then whispers
                                something about sweet curvature
                        of soul. What you take for love
                 pinches is really his tiny pruning
        of everything that may have ended
     in a forked twig or red fruit.
              Ask Eve. She’ll tell you about life
                     after the fiasco
                      when Adam wouldn’t stop
                                 obsessing over the tree,
                                      how he gave her wire, a trunk
                                           splitter, wanted her body
                                         a semi-cascade
                                in a glazed Tokoname pot.
                                   Most gods don’t crave
                                     an elongated neck,
                                 stunted feet; they want
                                       a certain bend
                         as you kneel on your prie-dieu,
                     they count your leaves like a rosary,
                   say mmm gazing on your arch-like ribs.
          Ask Eve about the scoliosis and the osteoporosis.
         She’ll tell you she’s glad she can’t look at the sky;
     the ripest apples for pie are always somewhere in the dirt.

          
—from In The Convent We Become Clouds

Wearing a Scarf of Recycled Sari Yarn, I Want Other Gods

It pours over my white habit
                      like a tropical cocktail,
so many lemons, mangos
even my mea culpas are strawberry.
            
               In the refectory window,
the reflection of my veil
                              becomes black hair
and I touch the extra bead on my rosary,
the vanity I haven’t prayed away.
        
            I will only go so far with Jesus,
won’t undress completely,
     a mistress he visits in another town
who perfumes his tired feet,
              
               listens to his miracles.
I’m not one of the wives
washing lepers in Calcutta,
raped in El Salvador.
                
                   It’s okay being lukewarm.

The morning I met Mother Teresa,
I tried to pull a thread from the blue
      trim of her sari
and, I swear,
               my hand burned for days.
                   

—from In The Convent We Become Clouds

Pieta

It’s the virgin’s hemline
she remembers
and a wedge of parmigiano

dunked in balsamic vinegar
so red she thinks of blood
or maybe chianti.

In the catacombs it’s wine,
a mossy bone-smell
like crushed grapes,

but she comes back
to the lace
on the edge of the dress.

She could count every stitch—
honeycomb, open-fan, rose, heart,
a litany of virgin names

softer than any thread
spun from stone.
She doesn’t speak of the dying

man’s weight or the folds
where the dress is a cradle,

but of the virgin’s height
if she could rise—

seven feet,
lace dripping over
those sandals like honey.

—from In The Convent We Become Clouds
(previously published in Prairie Schooner)