On Zurbarán's The Crucifixion (1627)

The Art Institute of Chicago

Suspended beautifully
between life and death,
caught clothed in submission
but naked in defiant glory

illuminated dramatically
for effect
against our long-ago acknowledged darkness,
lingering sweetly in two worlds with no decipherable direction,
no sacred urgency

is no way to prove a point about humility

But if the idea is the
power and the glory
the authority
then dancing on the line
between here and there
for the faithful men
of San Pablo el Reale
must have seemed
a blessed sort of magic

Unpublished, 2010

Gio reads "On Zurbaran's The Crucifixion" on YouTube