More on: poetry

I wanted to break down part of the Gospel story. As I see it, it’s not just about the son sacrificing himself and all those dynamics that inform the biography. I wanted to look at the messages in the Gospels that haunt our lives. What would we do in this world with someone who could perform miracles—verifiable, right-in-front-of-your-eyes miracles? It would just blow the top off the joint. But at the same time, I’m sure we’d find some way to commodify it.

Laughter is one way in which I experience God, and so I want to write about the ways in which I am sometimes lucky to experience the divine, as friend. A friend who makes you laugh out loud, and who makes you weep. I’m a weeper, and that too is a gift from God.

To sing of origins is to set a course
to anoint a present where cows and angels
cowherds and shepherd kings
all shine in heaven’s light

That first morning, I remember
clinging to a table’s edge—
both legs jackhammering the white

linoleum floor tiles—praying for
my benzodiazepine to finally,
finally kick in.

. . . faith in the faith that the way the story ends
is not the story—

May some mercy find them both.

Deacon Nkosi, a member of the church, told the newspaper,
“The pastor taught us about faith on Sunday last week.”

Maybe I was too bus-lagged to haggle over
the price of a portent, much less a cheap
souvenir. . .

Bible open. On her lap. Same page for years.
Her white hair. Spooky red ink. Deuteronomy.

There are so many ways to fly and walk
in place I never move.

In my absence, one sprig of English ivy
has crept through a crack
under my window.