Finding the Nails of Christ in a Flea Market Booth

[novapsyche]

They supposedly were real, guaranteed
to have split the wrist:
carpenter's nails, tips still stained
loganberry dark. The heads bent
to the side, as if defeated.
Beside them knelt porcelain
figures, painted caricatures
of Chaldean sages robed in dust.

But the biggest deal that day
was on Japanese knives, curved like
jaguar claws, in the booth next door.