Lauren Lax lbrown@carlsonsw.com
Tue, Oct 13, 2020, 9:32 AM

  
to arrowinflight
 
 
 
 
JoAnna, Wife of Chuza
 
I looked for you everywhere

First in my mother
then in the mirror
 
Joanna
 
In your friendship with 
Magdalene you approached
menstruation–just as you were
beginning to consider Jupiter’s red dot
That 13 earths could fit inside
Like your 13 years
When it eventually appeared
it came not as a scarlet rose
but with rust and ache and tears
 
Joanna
 
Wife of Chuza
Resourceful reliable
present for the resurrection
We will not know if she was faithful, baffled, bitter
or of her changes with each lunar rise and fall
 
Perhaps she was pulled onto the lap of Paul
just as I sunk the night my body first betrayed me.
 
Joanna I looked for you everywhere.
I do not think I am the only one
Bob Dylan did too–and he found none
but the memory of you

as each passing day that 
becomes more difficult to get through