For the usher who served the Lord's Supper to my wife and daughter wearing a sidearm
by Jonathan Frey
If I had been there in the pew when you
handed her the bread and wine, I'd have pushed
into the aisle, into the sacramental
silence, and there disarmed you
of the body and blood. Two years, and still I chew
this. Maybe the gun on your hip brushes my daughter's
shoulder and, too young to take the cup, she tastes
metal, fear, you standing between her and Jesus,
you and your fucking gun.
In the garden, Peter goes after Malchus,
the servant, tackles the poor bastard and proceeds
to hack off his ear.
Is this your plan? To guard us?
Well, you’re reading it wrong: Peter stands beside Jesus
before the consolidate apparatus of church-state violence,
of which that gun on your hip is implement. Implement you wield
against whom? Brown boys in the neighborhood? Toothless
addicts on the corner? Brother, you stand beside Caiaphas,
and even so you can’t protect us. You cannot keep anything
not kept by God. I know you think the Kingdom comes
from the mouth of a gun, like Peter, his knee on Malchus's
neck, the ear a rag in the dark grass. But Jesus
takes bread and breaks it, says, My Kingdom is
a grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies,
retrieves the ear from the grass, picks the detritus
with the tips of his holy fingers, restores it, much as I,
in my Sunday shoes, would turn to you
and extend the plate I'd taken, say, Take,
eat. But more likely,
if I had been there in the pew,
I'd have taken the tainted bread from you, a clot in the throat, and chewed.
Jonathan Frey holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University, and is associate professor of English at North Idaho College, teaching creative writing and composition. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Millions, and elsewhere. He lives in Spokane, Washington, with his wife and daughters, and has just completed work on his first novel.
