OLIVER BAEZ BENDORF

from THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO X

I still rejoice when I see stars in the North Woods sky, X tells me when he awakes from bed rest, perspiring, hair matted around his face. He dreamed he saw a wolf paddling circles in a kayak under the North Woods sky. And he awoke and I was by his side and took his woolly paw in my hand. He came and dwelt in a city made only for monsters, and I was there, and you are also there, and you, and you, and if you weep in the city for monsters you shall be comforted, for we all have wept before and will again.

X wonders about the etymology of repentance. He packs pickles and wild honey and goes into the wilderness. The whole kingdom inside his campsite. Is he still forgiven if he goes not into the river, but on it? Canoe as red as the shiny red toolbox. Red like a mosquito’s basic identity if we can be essentialist for a moment. The whole entire kingdom is red in some places. Red for secret pronouns, red in the face waiting for justice to come down. I want to tell him he does not need to confess himself, does not need to be sorry, has not sinned, but what do I know? Shame is also red and consequently everywhere. So off he goes to whisper in the woods. And we wait.

What is it about guilt that leads even non-believers to the water? We are sorry for the time we picked berries from our neighbor’s tree. Sorry for being stubborn and unforgiving. Awkward is the way X feels in his skin that grows woolier in biweekly increments. He is born unto himself and tries to think of it as good news. X remembers himself in daydreams swirling in a light blue dress in dusty sunlight. Sometimes the only sin is that you are a body. X arranges his past lives on the bookshelf according to color.

In this version and because we are attending to color, X is white, but also brown. Knows he is lucky when he walks at night. What is the use of being a boy, Gertrude Stein asked, if you grow up to become a man. A father asks his only son how he got to be so strong, as they carry a wooden desk into a small green house. Hello testosterone. Sometimes the only sin is being the wrong body in the wrong place at the wrong time.

X remembers Provincetown as shallow pine and fried malasadas. His sunburned ass white and red. Prayer fills the campsite each night. O God, make me a maker. Make me a sundressed lover, light on my feet. I want to paint each memory the color of red light coming through the pines. How hard is it to still love everybody? In the water, past the tip of land, there is a whale that remembers your deepest dirty secrets. You must get on your knees and listen. Or, better, sing along. Sing louder. Don’t stop.