"Jesus Auditions to Play Jesus" by Leigh Chadwick
In a small town in Ohio, Jesus’ agent books him an audition at the community theatre to play Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar. Jesus is nervous. He always has trouble remembering his lines, and his father was always too busy writing his memoirs and getting his hands stuck in clay to ever take him to singing lessons. Still, Jesus is a man of passion. For song. For dance. For stage lights and whenever possible, glitter. And anyway, Jesus knows time is running out. He’s already twenty-nine, and he promised his father that if he didn’t make it to Broadway by thirty, he’d enroll in the local community college and gain his certificate in carpentry, join a union, earn a pension. But Jesus tries not to think about any of that because right now he is on stage, alone, sweating from the neck as he mumbles his way through “What’s the Buzz.” The casting director cuts Jesus off halfway through the song. He says something Jesus can’t make out, but the crease in the casting director’s neck looks like a smile so who knows. Jesus bites his lip. Jesus doesn’t know. Jesus bites his lip harder until he tastes blood. He closes his eyes and it’s a week later. Jesus still hasn’t heard from the casting director. No callback, nothing. His agent stops returning his calls. It’s December. He’s less than a month away from turning thirty. Jesus enrolls in the spring semester at Columbus State Community College. He signs up for Carpentry 101. The week leading up to the start of the semester Jesus begins having vivid dreams: chipped paint dipped in lead, a goat being bashed in the head, finding six hundred grand buried in Joel Olsteen’s capped teeth painted whale bone, a shooting range built in the hallway of a middle school. Jesus doesn’t know what any of this means. His father is too busy melting ice caps and building winter tornadoes in the Midwest to ask. Then it’s the first day of class and Jesus is standing in front of an electric saw. He stares at the saw. He thinks, Anything can be sliced open if you have to slice it open. He thinks, The Angel of Death was the original Banksy. He continues to stare at the saw. He imagines what must come next: climbing out of a cave, the sun bright heat, days lost and mismatched, his wrists covered in sawdust.
Leigh Chadwick is the author of the poetry collection Your Favorite Poet (Malarkey Books, 2022) and the collaborative poetry collection Too Much Tongue (Autofocus, 2022), co-written with Adrienne Marie Barrios. Her poetry has appeared in Salamander, Passages North, Hobart, The Indianapolis Review, and Hobart, among others. She is a regular contributor at Olney Magazine, where she conducts the "Mediocre Conversations" interview series. Find her on Twitter at @LeighChadwick5.
