Jesus wept, the saying goes, and there he was, on his crucifix, laid out on the unceremonious bench, cast rigid into a plaster block, laid to waste on the Swanston Street spine.
The heat is searing, baking, under the transparent shell of the tram stop awning.
Six minutes til my tram. I don't want to sit on the bench with Jesus. I observe the form with suspicion. But I dare to touch the crucifix, lift its weight, to test it, from the metal slats. Only just, do I dare.
INRI at the top of the cross: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum: “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews" (John 19:19) etched above the figure, carved into the wood of the cross, or in this case, dug out of metal.
But these two? These two travellers snarling at the edge of the stingy shade? They are their own little kingdom, with rules and overseers. His body, coiled, the stringy neck of an unwell bird, head shaved. On her lower leg, a square within a square, locked away, inked into her ankle, just above the bone. They check the times displayed, consult the map on the glass awning, seething, searing each other.
‘I was tryin to be fucken nice to ya!’ she says. What comes from his mouth is gristly, it’s chewed up and spat at her. Her body retreats just a little, head hanging, eyes cast down. She’s held close, but testing an escape. Bound inside the square, the echoes clattering.
On the tram stop seat, the crucifix lying abandoned beside them. Unnoticed.
Man’s hands tight balls, but the knuckles, do they have those letters, I wonder, those tatts? E-W-M-N Evil Wicked Mean Nasty. I’m looking for the ink on flesh, but I can’t see it. Just the fists, at an angle, ready, fast to fly, hard to hit. Don’t need the ink to tell me this story. I stay on the edge of the next bench, wondering how Jesus sits with all this. Knowing Jesus is a dead weight.
Images of hospital rooms and overseeing gods, an omnipotent surveyor, a censorious eye, a forbidding authority. Misplaced above the bed of my agnostic father. Oh our forsaken souls, take the crucifix and mess with it. Stand that figure on his head, or hide him behind a vase. Here he is, in plain sight, King of the Jews on a bench seat in the boiling sun.
The woman looks back as she boards the tram. Notices the crucifix. Hesitates. Too late. She has to walk away. She follows her man, he who is rooster sharp. That tram is going some place, and she's on it, she's on board, on board with the bloke who just made her body flinch, in fear of a fist. She has set herself, a square within a square, close to the bone, and ready to cleave.
(c) Anna Sublet, 2018
The heat is searing, baking, under the transparent shell of the tram stop awning.
Six minutes til my tram. I don't want to sit on the bench with Jesus. I observe the form with suspicion. But I dare to touch the crucifix, lift its weight, to test it, from the metal slats. Only just, do I dare.
INRI at the top of the cross: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum: “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews" (John 19:19) etched above the figure, carved into the wood of the cross, or in this case, dug out of metal.
But these two? These two travellers snarling at the edge of the stingy shade? They are their own little kingdom, with rules and overseers. His body, coiled, the stringy neck of an unwell bird, head shaved. On her lower leg, a square within a square, locked away, inked into her ankle, just above the bone. They check the times displayed, consult the map on the glass awning, seething, searing each other.
‘I was tryin to be fucken nice to ya!’ she says. What comes from his mouth is gristly, it’s chewed up and spat at her. Her body retreats just a little, head hanging, eyes cast down. She’s held close, but testing an escape. Bound inside the square, the echoes clattering.
On the tram stop seat, the crucifix lying abandoned beside them. Unnoticed.
Man’s hands tight balls, but the knuckles, do they have those letters, I wonder, those tatts? E-W-M-N Evil Wicked Mean Nasty. I’m looking for the ink on flesh, but I can’t see it. Just the fists, at an angle, ready, fast to fly, hard to hit. Don’t need the ink to tell me this story. I stay on the edge of the next bench, wondering how Jesus sits with all this. Knowing Jesus is a dead weight.
Images of hospital rooms and overseeing gods, an omnipotent surveyor, a censorious eye, a forbidding authority. Misplaced above the bed of my agnostic father. Oh our forsaken souls, take the crucifix and mess with it. Stand that figure on his head, or hide him behind a vase. Here he is, in plain sight, King of the Jews on a bench seat in the boiling sun.
The woman looks back as she boards the tram. Notices the crucifix. Hesitates. Too late. She has to walk away. She follows her man, he who is rooster sharp. That tram is going some place, and she's on it, she's on board, on board with the bloke who just made her body flinch, in fear of a fist. She has set herself, a square within a square, close to the bone, and ready to cleave.
(c) Anna Sublet, 2018
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