Jim Shows Me Twelve Jesuses

in cinematic snippets, ten-second scenes of twelve Sons

                                    of man and, small eyes wide, he wants to know 

which face, which frame, which meekest little finger

captures the divine like aurora borealis

 

in a mason jar?  The one kneeling in gravel, black kinks coarse

as uncombed wool, hands flailing a whirlwind

 

of precepts like he's conjuring religion from air? 

New shot, new film: meet the close-up Jesus

 

whose adage and all its archaeology blink gone

the second you spot them: blue eyes

 

like small see-through planets, crystalline as the topaz

in glass-encased crowns.  Or how about

 

a clown, equipped with clown's fro, sporting

Superman tee and suspenders?  This Jesus jiggies

 

to the top of a New York high-rise, then weeps

at the right hand of twin towers.  Charmed,

 

bored, bemused—I still don't see

what I need, and what

 

do I need?  A person of color?  An androgynous mother?   

Even another—rectangular jaws made larger by

 

cropped hair and a rough goatee—is, at first,

just another modern man

 

playing God, or trying to, and don't I see that

infant need whenever the rearview reflects

 

my gritted teeth, my squint-eyes raging at a road that won't go

fast enough for the dashboard's digital clock

 

that's also mine and always ticks for me?

But then a dozen villagers in burlap robes

 

ask the bowl-cut Jesus why, and what, and who,

and this one, this one gulps

 

at doubt, then airs it out

by words of wide Bronx vowels

 

like his is a draft he's surprised by, like

who knew he'd find metaphors of stone? 

 

Like his father is weird as the eyes

of a spider, like he's learning religion as he goes.