IDOLATRY FOR DUMMIES
by Adele Elise Williams
Liberace had his lovers turn their faces into his own
like a man-mirror. What is the opposite of this
gesture? Something spiritual for sure. I am constantly
reminded that religion is creepy but perhaps our sole
hope for kindness. I am tired of being kind, of always
being on. I’m lowkey surprised that cults aren’t more
popular. Who doesn’t want to belong, to stake every
all-in move—their baskets brimming with eggs, their
moms crying into puffy pillows. If no one misses you,
are you even real? Maybe this cynicism is just from
one of me. How many me's are there? There is a me
that grinds on anything angled. And another me that
is mother of the year. And another me shut away with
silence in a house for God. When I was twelve a
wimpy woman with husk hair held my heels and
diagnosed my malaise. Daddy issues. Wrong again white
people! When I was twenty-five a hairless man
hovered his hands above my hips and asked how bad
it hurt when Jack the Ripper tore my body from itself,
asked if I even knew how many centuries I’d been
alive. Oh please sweet God of my dreams, of my fallacious
foxhole, let me die with a poem in my hand, with my own face,
with no one to regret their birth. My life is so small. You
could mail it to your mother! Liberace had a Steinway
in every room of his home. My lover says pianos
require round rooms and I wonder if Liberace’s home
was bubbles, was full-on foam. I don’t mean to be so
withholding. I don’t mean to drag the carrot, to hint
at treat. I’ll get to it. Would you switch your face for
me? Could you take the pain? Would I touch you
more if we were me? Would I love I? Where would I
go? Foamy foamy me all forever and faced and
heathen. All I.
This poem originally appeared in The Georgia Review, Winter 2022.