Lisa Dordal
i. Christmas Pageant

At twelve, I played Mary
in a community Christmas pageant.
I saw you at the service, people said.
I saw you with your baby,
riding your donkey. A real donkey,
led by some boy. Older boy.
Fourteen at least. I don't remember
his name or if I even knew it
at the time. Just that I couldn't look at him.
Couldn't look straight at him
without blushing and lowering my eyes.
Everyone said I made a great Mary.
That I did a great job being
the one God descended upon. No,
not descended upon. Entered.
That I did a great job being the one
God entered. And who
afterwards called it holy.

 
ii. Christmas Pageant Revisited

The boy is important, the visiting poet said.
Immensely important. The center of the poem,
he said. Her desire for him is the center of the poem,
the dramatic center. Her desire for him is
what this poem is about. This much is clear:
She desires him. The girl riding a donkey
desires him, the boy, the dramatic center.
You need to build him up more,
he continued. Give him a name, good looks,
maybe a touch of acne. Help us to see him,
to see the real center of this poem.
To see into the center; to see inside her
desire. Help us to get inside—
inside the blushing and the lowering.
Tell us how blue his eyes are, how dark his hair,
how straight and perfect his
nose. We need to see him. The center
of her desire. Unless, of course, you are striving
(striving!) to create an aura of mystery—
an illusion of mystery—like you would
if you were talking about, say, God. 
from the book MOSAIC OF THE DARK / Black Lawrence Press
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Tracing of an engraving of a Greek vase
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via THE BBC
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"After a long hiatus from school, I was working on a Master’s in literature, and just beginning to write poems of my own, when I first read Marilyn Chin’s Rhapsody in Plain Yellow. This book, with its densely allusive fabric, hyper-vivid imagery, and wild formal range, opened up my idea of what poetry can do. 'Horse Horse Hyphen Hyphen,' which I wrote about extensively in my thesis, is one of the central loci for all the concerns of the book..."
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