The Apostle Paula
Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness.
—The Apostle Paul, 1 Timothy 2:9–10
I was riding toward Damascus
to yell at some Christians and maybe
stone a few uninhibited women
when Christ, that cowboy,
saw I couldn’t ride a horse for shit.
Came down as the wind
and whispered, buck, in my pony’s ear.
The next thing you know
I’ve had a vision, a conversion.
I’ve slept in the house of Christians,
and I’m no longer Saul, but Paul.
I know all the Catholic prayers
better than your grandmother.
And still I couldn’t get things right—
always telling women what to do
or even how to wear their hair
in church. O ladies of Ephesus,
surely you know that most of us
need more than one transformation
in our lives. Christ set me straight
a second time by putting me in drag.
And I have to admit, at first,
I thought She was crazy,
coming at me with that makeup brush
as if it were a knife, and I the lamb
of sacrifice, then hog tying me in that corset.
But like most prudishness,
I found mine was rooted in jealousy.
Who doesn’t want to wear
pearl earrings, gold eyeshadow,
and to speak of beautiful things?
I wanted every bit I couldn’t want:
a costly garment, low cut,
velvet, high slit up the thigh.
I wanted breasts and cat eyes,
glue-on lashes, and hair that bumped
the doorframe when I walked
into the room. I wanted to be
noticed by everyone—to glitter
like a stage light at a cabaret.
My whole life till then had been a lip sync
where I kept getting the words
wrong. No longer! Welcome
to the stage the Apostle Paula!
This one goes out to my
Ephesian sisters. I can’t ask
your forgiveness for all the pain.
But dammit! I can sing.
Source: Poetry (December 2024)