Jézus Beside the Bed
Timea Sipos
A walk through Szépművészeti Múzeum: a labyrinth of Jézus.
Jézus on the cross Jézus in Mary’s arms Jézus on wood Jézus on copper Jézus on Jézus
He hung above Nagyi’s bed,
The one I slept in those humid visits
Home to the Hungarian countryside.
Nagyi’s Catholic back, curved like a sickle,
From harvesting the fascist, communist,
now democratic, always dictatorial
Fields, laid against a cot hard as a church
pew down in the basement
While Jézuska, with his tanned, muscular
Bleeding heart chest crowned with thorns,
Watched me rub myself to my first klímax,
But not my second.
Saturday mornings at the butcher’s
Nagyi greets the young priest ahead of her in line:
May they praise him.
They didn’t teach this one at seminary
He must respond Forever.
Father told me look at the hands.
Hands are the hardest to paint,
Harder than the callouses on Nagyi’s
Hands, the arthritic knobs of her fingers,
Harder even than the glare Nagyi burned
Into my chest the morning she found Jézuska
Beside the bed, facing the wall, and my cheeks,
Red as the heart that bled in Jézuska’s chest.
Jézus on the cross Jézus in Mary’s arms Jézus on wood Jézus on copper Jézus on Jézus
He hung above Nagyi’s bed,
The one I slept in those humid visits
Home to the Hungarian countryside.
Nagyi’s Catholic back, curved like a sickle,
From harvesting the fascist, communist,
now democratic, always dictatorial
Fields, laid against a cot hard as a church
pew down in the basement
While Jézuska, with his tanned, muscular
Bleeding heart chest crowned with thorns,
Watched me rub myself to my first klímax,
But not my second.
Saturday mornings at the butcher’s
Nagyi greets the young priest ahead of her in line:
May they praise him.
They didn’t teach this one at seminary
He must respond Forever.
Father told me look at the hands.
Hands are the hardest to paint,
Harder than the callouses on Nagyi’s
Hands, the arthritic knobs of her fingers,
Harder even than the glare Nagyi burned
Into my chest the morning she found Jézuska
Beside the bed, facing the wall, and my cheeks,
Red as the heart that bled in Jézuska’s chest.
Timea Sipos is a Hungarian-American writer, translator, written- and spoken-word poet with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her writing appears in Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Juked, and elsewhere. A 2021-2022 Steinbeck Fellow, she has received support from the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, and elsewhere.
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