Brett Warren

What It Is
Convent retreat

I’m basically naked in this room
with Jesus, who’s nearly naked
himself, there on the wall above the bed.
It doesn’t seem awkward, though,
because his eyes are closed. Some say
he can still see everything. Or is that
his dad? I forget how all that goes.
I’m sure they’ve both seen nakedness
before. Jesus, it’s hot in here,
even with the air conditioning on.
Worse outside. Later, it’ll be hotter
than hell. But my suffering is nothing
compared to what happened to Jesus,
what with the betrayal and the cross
and the nails. Or even the suffering
of the guy I saw outside, digging a trench
in sweltering heat. I asked him what for,
and he said a generator. They should’ve
sent an excavator for the job, he said,
but they sent me instead. It is what it is.
People want everything done yesterday.
And I thought, Jesus, even the nuns?
They seem so patient, not the type
to demand things at all. But maybe
it wasn’t even them. Maybe the call
came from the guy’s big boss.
I didn’t say anything more. The sisters
have welcomed me, and I’m not even
one of them—just another unchurched,
Buddhist-leaning, wandering agnostic.
These nuns say they’re called to hospitality.
We eat together in silence twice a day.
I’m invited to chapel, though I never go.
I just read and write and think and sleep
in the peace of their immaculate house.
If that’s not grace, I don’t know what is.

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Brett Warren (she/her) is a longtime editor and the author of The Map of Unseen Things (Pine Row Press, 2023). Her poetry has appeared in Canary, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Harbor Review, Hole in the Head Review, Rise Up Review, SWWIM, and other literary publications. A triple nominee for Best of the Net 2023 (Poetry), she lives in a house surrounded by pitch pine and black oak trees—nighttime roosts of wild turkeys, who sometimes use the roof of her writing attic as a runway. www.brettwarrenpoetry.com

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