Month: September 2019
-
the arrangement of God
John Chrysostom preaches jazz— I stay up all night to hear it, see it—fire raining outside moussaka diner Eucharists, eyeing out eternity in intimate, bright-eyed company, seeking, like Lazarus’ dogs, to lick away wounds, peel back the sores scarring the world’s dermal divinity. Until we see it: a love-encrusted world, and we are baked in…
-
Poor parish wine
Wash my pride, Sparkling yellow, red is too rich for our blood. We are weak. Our lips are chapped. Dancing in the golden cup, Light-rimmed golden wine Given for your poverty and mine.
-
the women who stayed
“We were moms, we used painter’s tape”A very subversive group—The women who stayed.who stayed behind in kitchensbaking bread from thefirst supper to the last,who gave their treasureto the God whogave all his away.They did not run that Friday,They walked with him.Sobbed, wailed, as his blood—the wine they gave—gushed through his wounds,into gutters,emptied into the graveBut…
-
bodega kadesi
In the bodega kitty-corner from me, where I go to purchase emergency toiletries, there lives the most mystical marmalade tabby. This is not my usual bodega—the Yemeni operation up two blocks, which I support with ferocious loyalty after their fire in June. I believe my monthly purchase of Ben & Jerry’s pints is more than…
-
baptism by fire
Mountain steaming baptism complete, One stumble on the path back down, Skin lost, blood seeps, Small gravel lacerating Blood blistering my palms. Christ fell three times, and I’ve still but once. One puffy pinhead of Stigmata puckers underneath my skin. I wait for it to rise, To scab, To work its way down or back…
-
John Chrysostom in the MRI
At 7 AM, the hospital is empty, clean and quiet. I patter in slip-grip socks to the bathroom and back to sit in front of the television detailing grisly morning news reports. I squeeze my ears shut, trying to move the sound of the TV screen to the background, like a picture watermark in Microsoft…
-
to have a door
Someone said that we can give alms by giving away seconds of our day. Time is commodified—each second is a second to be earning. And that, actually, we can give away our perishable treasure—not gold or silver (in this economy, let’s be honest, who has much of those anyway? Our treasure’s become less vulnerable to…
-
love lit up antioch for us
and heaven and hell seemed for ever round the corner, with people struggling on the borderlines and never knowing which way it was going to turn out, and in which of these two states they would be spending their immortality, and this led to a lot of conversation about it all, and it was extremely…
-
chacos in the kingdom of god
three moments The universe was not made in jest but in solemn, incomprehensible earnest.—Annie Dillard, The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek And sometimes its earnest bubbles out of our eyes before we can stop it, because we are fragile, fungible, infectible beings. I. I was in the doctor’s office, looking at x-rays of my hips. I…
-
dear anyone
Dear anyone who will listen, cried the gypsy singer on the platform, this poem’s for you he said, his long hair damp with sweat dripping down to his kinky boots. You have enough todays to make a life, you won’t be snuffed out before you reach the tomorrow you’re always putting off. You have enough…
Sweet Unrest 