THE PROPHET’S WIFE

Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD. –Hosea 1:2

My sin is biblical—I am the wife of the prophet,
though my man’s holiness is merely a product of contrasts.

Still, remember the whore who the prophet found,
cleaned up, and brought to his marriage tent;

the one who after a dew days felt the stirrings
In her belly and went out? Remember her?

They called her whore for want of words to speak
to the insatiable hunger of her desire, the wantonness

of her waywardness. But whores are less venal;
their sin is mammon and the calculation

of economics of need. Me, I am like the prophet’s
wife, the one who kept a record of the shape

of every penis she met—the one who wakes
early and crawls into the street to give herself

to the thirst of fools. I have nothing to show
for this but the biblical proportion of my flaming.

Gomer's Song