Articulation
A poem
kicker
Poem![](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/0TnnKI17qF20I94Z-ozUJPzCvtA=/173x953:6753x4656/615x346/media/img/2019/04/69329508543225757_original/original.jpg)
— After Miguel Cabrera’s portrait of Saint Gertrude, 1763
In the legend, Saint Gertrude is called to write
after seeing, in a vision, the sacred heart of Christ.
Cabrera paints her among the instruments
of her faith: quill, inkwell, an open book,
rings on her fingers like Christ’s many wounds—
the heart emblazoned on her chest, the holy
infant nestled there as if sunk deep in a wound.
Against the dark backdrop, her face is a wafer
of light. How not to see, in the saint’s image,
my mother’s last portrait—the dark backdrop,
her dress black as a habit, the bright edge
of her afro ringing her face with light? And how
not to recall her many wounds: ring finger
shattered, her ex-husband’s bullet finding
her temple, lodging where her last thought lodged?
Three weeks gone, my mother came to me
in a dream, her body whole again but for
one perfect wound, the singular articulation
of all of them: a hole, center of her forehead,
the size of a wafer—light pouring from it.
How, then, could I not answer her life
with mine, she who saved me with hers?
And how could I not, bathed in the light
of her wound, find my calling there?