Breadcrumb #222

RON RIEKKI

The People in the Bible
weren’t always in the Bible.
Before that they were in Jerusalem
and Cleveland

or wherever.
I don’t know math very well,
but I know that there were twelve unsubstantiated apostles.

The twelve unsubstantiated apostles
ate a substantial meal
and it somehow got converted

into a ritual of transubstantiation,
but I’m too young to understand all this shit.
I just know that the people in the Bible

are trapped in the Bible
and Lot’s wife keeps getting turned into salt
and how much does it suck to be a condiment and, worse, to be called “Lot’s Wife”

your entire life
or your entire death
or whatever,

your entirety of being salt,
mythological salt, and you can’t even be as cool as mythological pepper
and you can’t even have your own name

and your husband has to be called “Lot,”
which is like having a husband named A Great Deal
or A Whole Boatload of Stuff

when you just want to be married to a Jacob
or an Emily
or a Mohammed

or an Aino.
How come there’s no Ainos in the Bible?
I had a great-grandpa named Aino

and ‘great-grandpa’ is a helluva long time ago.
My cheeks are starting to flush like a toilet thinking about all this.
I’m getting myself riled up like it’s the Trump fake election again.

I can’t even blink anymore without feeling like needing a drink
of red wine, blood red, with the stamp
of Jesus all over the bottle.

I went to a church yesterday, but the building had no answers for me.
It’s why when the Saami worship, we go outside, into the heart and lungs of nature
instead of being trapped in the tin cans of Christianity.

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