Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. Over 16,000 daily subscribers. Over 7,000 archived posts.
Doug Anderson: Put Your Hand In My Wound
Easter, 2022
And the wind blew the buds off the trees,
scattering red across the black road.
Jesus out of his tomb and wandering
among the rotting corpses in Ukraine,
dragging his bandages behind him.
Put your hand in my wound, he says.
As you would a woman.
What I wanted to be born from this is lost.
Do you still doubt me that the world is broken?
Nothing has changed.
The God I thought I knew has receded
into a twilight of blood-clotted beards.
All these years and you’ve not noticed,
as your man Blake showed you,
all angels have a single hoof.
Your reckoning is with yourself.
Copyright 2022 Doug Anderson
Doug Anderson’s new collection of poems Undress, She Said will be published by Four Way Books in 2022.
Vox Populi 
Outstanding. Tired of most protest poetry – but this one hits with such power and authenticity – beautifully composed.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks, Diana! Michael Simms Publisher/Vox Populi Founder/Autumn House Press Author/Nightjar Author/American Ash
LikeLiked by 2 people
I love it. Lean, open, hard-hitting, vulnerable, like a wound. Love the red buds scattering as the parallel of Jesus wandering among bloody corpses. Fantastic finish. This poem makes me want to find your books.
However, I am struggling with the line “As you would a woman”. The syntax makes me read this as “Put your hand in my wound as you would put your hand in a woman.” The next line corroborates that reading.
The problem is that the woman – women in general, as the poem does not speak of a specific woman – is not an agent, but a receptacle. And although that seems to fit with the Christian myth that the poem invokes, I think poetry can move us to a better world. As it is, that line could even be read as a Trumpian ethos – “Grab ’em by the #####” – which is so clearly not your intention.
I am unfamiliar with the rest of your work. Perhaps, elsewhere in your ouvre, you have done the work that would preclude that kind of reading of this particular line in this particular poem. But if not, my suggestion would be to revise/remove that line so that this otherwise dazzling poem does the beautiful work, unimpeded, that it is trying to do.
If I have read the poem incorrectly, please forgive, but I care about this poem.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Jose, the reference is to John 20:27 which the King James Version renders as: ‘Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.” I believe that Doug Anderson’s poem extends the image into a metaphor. Christ’s wound is like a vagina, his body is like a womb where the spirit has been planted and will grow. Whether Anderson’s theology is accurate, I can’t say, but the metaphor is compelling.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It seems you discount what woman have to teach us when we enter their temple.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Actually, I don’t. But entrance to the temple is by invitation only, not by fiat, not because a third party tells you that you should. “Put your hand in my wound / as you would a woman / who has offered you shelter” honors the temple without objectifying the woman.
LikeLiked by 2 people
A haunting and so terribly apt a poem. Thank you for it, for its challenge, and presence.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Margo!
Michael Simms https://www.michaelsimms.info
Author of Nightjar Author of American Ash Founder of Autumn House Press Editor of Vox Populi
>
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ok thats great
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ohh these lines are really sad, but never stop beleiving god’s not there, there is everything written and he would surely in some form escape such a bad condition. Since the people who ignite war will always be called off daemon and with no respect in the world.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for this… Michael Simms https://www.michaelsimms.info
Author of Nightjar Author of American Ash Founder of Autumn House Press Editor of Vox Populi
>
LikeLike