Tania De Rozario (b. 1982)

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SELECTED POEMS

Note To The Queer Kid in the Pews:
In Classical Mythology, Lucifer Is A Name For The Planet Venus.

Picture Jesus, my pastor says, pretending
to flog his own back. He smacks

his lips, spitting words like stones
I carry in my pockets: Imagine the pain he felt

ascending Calvary. The memory is steep
in doubt. I’ve yet to conquer

this slope. My knees are bent
backward and my faith is crooked

and all I see when Jesus falls
a third time is absence

of revolution: mother weeping,
followers powerless. Sometimes I grieve-hum

childhood hymns - meditate rage,
quake questions about why I was made

always to scrounge for faith
that looked anything like me. Why

no one taught me that love shared a planet
with the devil, that love like light shapes

shadows. Look harder. This glint in my eyes is the sun
in my throat. This shimmer of scales

are the snakes in my skin, this blood
pressed stiff into soil the wings

I cut off. The truth is: I loved Jesus
but did not want to be any child a parent

would make suffer. I no longer ask
the unanswerable questions: why

desire looks like demons, why
we disown our own for rewards

unseen. And what punishment fits
the first father to cast an angel of his own making

down to earth? This trudge back up
is full of spite. Watch us slither

belly-down, back to heaven. Watch us melt
the ground with this heat. Watch us

comfort your children who hang heavy
with love that has no place to go.

We make kingdoms of our own
commandment: we say let there be light.

by Tania de Rozario
first published in The Cornstock Review (2022)

 

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