Siobhan Jean-Charles

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Ars Poetica as Jacob Wrestling the Angel

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“And he said, ‘Let me go, for the day breaketh’;

And he said, ‘I will not let thee go, except thou bless me’.”

–Genesis 32:26

In childhood, I was taught the best thing a woman could be was

dead or full of pain. My youth group learned about St. Gianna,

who refused an abortion and died a week after her fourth child’s birth.

St. Catherine of Sienna, told her only beauty was her waterfall of hair.

She shaved her head and stopped eating. Alone in my backyard,

I swallowed dirt, teeth turning clay-red. Years later, I named myself

after St. Bernadette for my Confirmation, who ate mud

while digging for healing waters with her hands.

Watching The Sound of Music, I adored Maria, her pixie cut

and canary voice, opening her arms among the fir trees to embrace

the sky. I wanted to be a nun, forgetting Maria was exiled

from the abbey for her full-throated singing, for releasing church music.

One mid-pandemic Christmas, I released my hair from its satin bonnet
and visited my aunts. I continued the rituals, abandoned during lockdown–

bleached my teeth until the enamel glowed, drank only water,

braided my hair. I couldn’t look a mess around my aunts.

Yellow as I am, gifted whitening cream which burned my childhood

citrine skin. Its warning label a scramble of French. Bless my mother,

envied by her sisters for her complexion, anointing me in mercury.

Bless her black knuckles. For the first time in months, I looked 

myself in the eye. My skin was clear and my cheekbones sharp. I turned

my head to gaze at the nose I once avoided, once thought grotesque.

In the mirror, beauty at last visited me like a daytime comet. 

I’m vain, declared my auntie, who looks good with no hair 

or a Mohawk. Auntie, I’m vain, too. 

And aren’t there worse flaws? Of the seven sins, isn’t this 

the least deadly? The film claims Maria returns to the convent

out of faith to keep her vows, but secretly loves the wealthy captain.

In her autobiography, Maria says it wasn’t her choice to marry.

I thought I wanted to be a nun, but I was unholy, I was sacrilegious. 

I wanted a shrine, a stained-glass window and portrait. 

I wanted a myrrh scented chapel. I wanted to be a golden calf. 

Beauty’s beacon blinded me. I hold beauty’s hand, gently.

I’ll dye my hair silver, won’t grieve when it leaves with dawn.

Beauty–bless this syntax, this altar, and the crown of my shorn head.

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