Brushstrokes, for Robert Mapplethorpe

by John M. Anderson 
  
I love those Renaissance paintings in which snails
slip in and out the cool mouths of Christ’s stigmata, snails
resting a moment in the cave of his dead palm, leaving silver
trails woven among the crusty paths his sacred
blood took down his forearms, that there are no such

paintings, that Christ’s hair stirs
like garden moss, a pearl rosary stitching
an embroidery, a surgery all night—the brown spiral
galaxies dropping through the darkness like sweat.

© 2008 by John M. Anderson. All rights reserved.
John M. Anderson divides his time between Boston and Cripple Creek, Colorado. His chapbook, Dictionary Quilt (Pudding House, 2007), is about the weird dream landscapes of the American southwest. He is working on a book called “Old Masters, Iraq War Edition.”