Chapel

by Damien Becker

Jesus, late

of Mater Hospital South Brisbane
entrance, was carved with a chainsaw, 
hewn from the safety of bark casting

by steel cutter teeth, further detailed 
with a chisel, gouge and bent, then
sanded back to prayer. 

We love complaints! reads the poster 
on the wall behind the messiah
as opportunities to learn. 

Car lights exiting the underworld 
parking on their way to West End 
flash through the stained glass

of the empty chapel behind the vending machine
and those spirits are moving through 
and over me, my bald head the Sacré-Cœur

Montmartre disco ball on a Saturday night. 
I wander the pews, rest to hang myself 
over in service to oxygenation, in-patient

mirror of His attendant curve. We 
share air in the dry silence, neither 
with anything to say, His cheeks stained 

with rose wax, mine paled with deficiency, 
flow sapped. A revelation: I consider 
anointing my forehead with Coke Zero 

in supplication, but I am shy with 
total strangers and anyhow, my Father 
is calling me from Melbourne to talk footy. 
​
Damien Becker is a disabled writer and community development worker from Murwillumbah NSW on Bundjalung Country. An award-winning spoken word artist, his poetry has been published by Australian Poetry Journal, Verity La, Bramble Journal, and Sunder Journal, among others. He lives with cystic fibrosis and is a double-lung transplant recipient.