Jesus in the Desert

by Colin Cheney

Don’t tell me who my father is—
Adam, bourbon-drunk
& we around his September fire, this spitted pork-loin
turning slow off a 9-volt & slathered
in pepper & mustard by hand—Don’t tell me who
my fucking father is.

(Call it the devil, if you must,

how this feels.

You’d be mad or driven

to wilderness

if climbing out the river

that ache still unreleased

you heard something bird-kin

say yer the Son of everything—

In the dark, now, beyond the fire: ruin
Adam wants to re-take. In sweet William
& daylilies gone volunteer
he sees this lattice of veined copper,
& a tub from the second story
all bone-light in alders: the negative
of his father’s once lightning-took home
now wilderness nearly.

(And Satan said

just say the word, & Christ

told him to fuck off,

from the city on the mountains, the psalms,

don’t they—

& Christ tells him again, fuck off.

Which isn’t the conversation
we’re having. Okajima on the radio
is pitching well in the sixth,
though I want us to lose
as though that madness blossoming
inside me could, green-flash in the fuse box
of memory, burn everything away
into some new season.

(Some gospels

say spirit, some madness

or maybe temptation

took Jesus into the desert

or was it wilderness?

But that isn’t the conversation we’re having.
He’s still arguing about his father,
& no one said anything
about his father.

We walk into the valley to a bar

& still cradling the dog—light
about something massive,
something dark—
Adam calls his brother in the city

(in the desert, mad

with thirst & wonder asking

the very earth

Tell me about my father—

& the announcer’s saying two out
in the eighth but I can’t hear who they’re putting in
& I’m imagining

the green of the outfield

what Jesus escaped into

anemone, cyclamen

all suburb now.

As the son of everything

climbed free of the river, the dove
refusing to just stop already, John’s hands
reeking of water & goat
not nearly baptism enough,
he felt that want rising, knowing
everything was not nearly Father enough.

What was it

our father didn’t want me to know?

His brother,

elsewhere, also watching the game,
listens carefully,

says, carefully,

fuck off.