Jesus’ Son

The artist sees beauty in the
perversity of lesions
but doesn’t bother to paint them gold.
Instead, he drills into them
until they’re sinkholes
of misguided enlightenment,
hangs them in his exhibition –
mostly self-portraits –
where you find yourself,
a haunted speck, worn out and
older than you remember.
A misprint in his favourite poem.
A lump of mould from the
rotten clay he uses to
sculpt his muses.
Calloused hands of hessian
pressing molten slip
into your contours;
you cannot separate the art
from the artist
when you unfold in the palm
of his canvas.

Make way for his insidious
paintbrush. Needles of neon
and iridescent hues injected into
dull flesh, obsessively disguising
muted blues behind performative rushes.
He staples himself to an easel,
taut epidermis smeared with
heresy and ego and faecal
petroleum. The disciples are fawning
over His latest creation,
milking his wounds before
the curtain falls.
He has become Jesus’ son;
a magnum opus or hubristic crucifixion?

Let chaos reign in the wake of the artist
who sacrifices his soul for the sake of a legacy.

_{Emily Adams, 20, England.}