Poem and Prayer


When we didn't have much
because hail ruined the crops
or grasshoppers
or drought
or we just couldn't catch a break

we had prayer.
We prayed for rain, without the hail.
We prayed the grasshoppers would fly away.
We prayed on our knees each night
and awakened hopeful to morning.

Hail continued to fall, except during droughts.
The grasshoppers left, but in their place
the corn borers came.
We persevered, each night praying
Dear Lord, Dear Lord.

Then Sis drowned.
We prayed by the pool that she might pull through.
We prayed she'd go to heaven.
We prayed to ease our pain.
We prayed knowing we'd catch no breaks.
We became good at prayer
though prayer never seemed good to us.
Yet on we prayed, for we dared not stop.





Just Another Jesus


He handed me an Oreo. We shared a pint of milk
atop a cardboard mat—traffic spraying rain
from the bridge overhead. Just another Jesus

dismissive of the times, full of grandiose ideas
and holy plans revealed by his prayers. Clearly
he had nothing, like me. I laughed,

the bridge underbelly smelling of piss and worse.
He offered another cookie, admitting our circumstances
dire, but pointed upward where the autos splashed.

Higher authority: his marching orders from there.
Another Jesus, though he called himself Gil,
certain he'd been chosen to do god's work.

He'd shake the system, create a better, would I
join his crew? I looked around: all down-and-outers
like him and me, destined for our lonely crucifixes.

I wished him well, said the road called.
He placed in my palm a stone from his pocket:
“This took centuries to smooth.”

Rough and ragged men sheltered by a bridge,
we owned the endless hunger in our guts, and some,
a few sorry years yet for filing down our edges.





Kamikaze


Our Mum
prickly as a mustering drill sergeant.
Our rides to church her personal
crusade against grime stuck
on Sis and me, unfit for the holy

of holies. Mum the merciless,
applying TP and sandpaper
hanky on the dupes trapped in back:
Blow! And into the TP

we blew. The hanky following,
into which she spat,
turning our stomachs empty
from the sin of arising too late.
Ears! Mum's finger in damp hanky
ferreting out our deepest grits,

Mum's clicking tongue lubing her palm
to stick my cowlick, Sis's bangs. Her
bristly brush. Her breath. Seven minutes
of torture, then the march triumphant

into church. Clean, cherubic, stinking of spit.
Our Mum. There, inside heaven's gate,
spit-shining each tormented child — 
Ears!