The Sistine Chapel

on a sideways seat      I squeeze into place          shoulder to shoulder 

with those        like me         who’ve come to rubber-neck the heavens   

silence please         a swampy pause            as a priest in a black cassock  

recites a prayer        a slow ascension of footnoted fingers     point to 

the souls of saints and sinner  as I scan the plate-names of prophets     

a sacred council    a row of jurors    their sageness working the room      

above their noble visages         there is clearly some kind of madness     

in Michelangelo’s figures     which dovetail         like Manga cartoons             

what to make of this cirrostratus of flesh       of the shoe-string light      

that slips over a virgin’s shoulder    what to make of these markings 

conjured up by a common hire-for-hand      the least quiet presence 

in the room            silence please           I close my eyes                 and listen 

not for the cries of those caught in the deluge        or David’s whoop

but for the sound        of ‘Il Divino’s’ platform       creaking into place

KIM WATERS

Kim Waters lives in Melbourne, Australia. She has a Master of Arts degree in creative writing from Deakin University and has just completed an Advanced Diploma of Visual Arts. Her poems have appeared in The Australian, The Shanghai Literary Review, Cordite, and The Raintown Review.