Saul Tells God His Fortune
A new spin on 2 Samuel 1-2
 
I hated him enough to go against
my God, my people, and my best instincts.
God’s jealous. Tough. Traffic with the dead stinks
in His nostrils. You’d have to lose all sense
to let a peasant boy like David fence
you in that way. God’s mousetrap! Now, God thinks
David. And unthinks Saul. Unties those links
to everything I loved. Instant past tense
my sons, my reign—my life…. But tell me, God,
what special piety Your David has.
Like Saul, he’s just a man. A hunk of sludge,
some flecks of righteousness: a splendid clod
of dirt. God, I’m a father—or I was.
And flesh loves flesh. Impossible to budge….
  




As the Dust of the Earth
An anthropological retelling of Genesis 25-35
 
The Bible tells me so: why, even God
foreknew farmers would one day rule the roost,
that cunning hunter-gatherers would plod
their way to extinction. So He gave a boost
to Jacob’s chances through his papa’s blessing
(that birthright ploy) and told Esau to hit
the road for happier hunting grounds. The best
He’d do was grant Esau that in a snit
in later times his progeny would lord
it over Jacob’s. The last hurrah, then down
to death. The caves and deserts all send word
of their demise. A clutch of tools, a frowning
skull, some charred bones: that’s it for Esau’s clan,
while Jacob’s spreads like locusts on the land.