Jonathan Diaz
The First Sorrowful Mystery
We pass the dire night in kneeling,
hours after mass. Each flame
carried out, each bright thing
masked as we are sung into unseeing prayer.
I still taste the bitter chalice:
a copper tang beneath the thin
veneer of gold, the faintest touch
of sugared wine onto my tongue,
the host wetly crumbling in my mouth.
The first food I have eaten today
and it is holy and scarce. I remain
ravenous, a body useless
for devotion. The dim hours
of contemplation have left me
looking for any lure to catch
my drooping head, to pull it
over the lip of the pew before me:
But this dark confounds each effort
and shuts my weighty eyes.
I, drowsy apostle:
god’s blood
in my
slumbering gut.
Bio
Jonathan Diaz is a Chicano poet and educator from Los Angeles, California. He has received an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Notre Dame and taught rhetoric, composition, and great books courses at Biola University, the University of Southern California, and Baylor University, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in English Literature. Diaz’s poetry can be found in Latino Book Review, Rock & Sling, and Shō Poetry Journal. He currently lives in Texas with his wife, Abigail.