IF JESUS HAD A IPHONE

Grimalkin by Thomas Lynch

One of these days she will lie there and be dead.
I’ll take her out back in a garbage bag
and bury her among my sons’ canaries,
the ill-fated turtles, a pair of angelfish:
the tragic and mannerly household pests
that had the better sense to take their leaves
before their welcomes and my patience had worn thin.
For twelve long years I’ve suffered this damned cat
while Mike, my darling middle son, himself
twelve years this coming May, has grown into
the tender if quick-tempered manchild
his breeding blessed and cursed him to become.
And only his affection keeps this cat alive
though more than once I’ve threatened violence -
the brick and burlap in the river recompense
for mounds of furballs littering the house,
choking the vacuum cleaner, or what’s worse:
shit in the closets, piss in the planters, mice
that winter indoors safely as she sleeps
curled about a table leg, vigilant
as any knickknack in a partial coma.
But Mike, of course, is blind to all of it -
the gray angora breed of arrogance,
the sluttish roar, the way she disappears for days
sex-desperate once or twice a year,
urgently ripping her way out the screen door
to have her way with anything that moves
while Mike sits up with tuna fish and worry,
crying into the darkness, “Here kitty kitty,”
mindless of her whorish treacheries
or of her crimes against upholsteries -
the sofas, love seats, wingbacks, easy chairs
she’s puked and mauled into dilapidation.
I have this reoccurring dream of driving her
deep into the desert east of town
and dumping her out there with a few days’ feed
and water. In the dream, she’s always found
by kindly tribespeople who eat her kind
on certain holy days as a form of penance.
God knows, I don’t know what he sees in her.
Sometimes he holds her like a child in his arms
rubbing her underside until she sounds
like one of those battery powered vibrators
folks claim to use for the ache in their shoulders.
And under Mike’s protection she will fix her
indolent green-eyed gaze on me as if
to say: Whaddaya gonna do about it, Slick,
the child loves me and you love the child.
Truth told, I really ought to have her fixed
in the old way with an airtight alibi,
a bag of Redi-mix and no eyewitnesses.
But one of these days she will lie there and be dead.
And choking back loud hallelujahs, I’ll pretend
a brief bereavement for my Michael’s sake,
letting him think as he has often said
“Deep down inside you really love her don’t you Dad?”
I’ll even hold some cheerful obsequies
careful to observe God’s never-failing care
for even these, the least of His creatures,
making some mention of a cat-heaven where
cat-ashes to ashes, cat-dust to dust
and the Lord gives and the Lord has taken away.
Thus claiming my innocence to the end,
I’ll turn Mike homeward from that wicked little grave
and if he asks, we’ll get another one because
all boys need practice in the arts of love
and all boys’ aging fathers in the arts of rage.

Love Is Not All

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 

And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 

Yet many a man is making friends with death 

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 

It well may be that in a difficult hour, 

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 

Or nagged by want past resolution's power, 

I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 

Or trade the memory of this night for food. 

It well may be. I do not think I would. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay

First Shot

Michael Leviton

When I was four years old, 

my mother took me for my first shot. 

We waited in a line 

of sobbing children, 

asking their mothers, 

“Will it hurt? Will it hurt?” 

The mothers all said, 

“No, it won’t hurt.”

I asked my mother, “Will it hurt?”

She said, “It’ll hurt a little 

but it won’t last very long.”

When it came time for my shot, 

I didn’t cry. 

The nurse told my mother,

she’d never given a shot to a child 

who wasn’t crying, 

that I was the bravest child 

she’d ever seen. 

My mother said it wasn’t about bravery, 

that the other children weren’t 

crying out of fear, 

but out of sorrow 

at the betrayal of their mothers.

Marked by Ashes

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
     halfway back to committees and memos,
     halfway back to calls and appointments,
     halfway on to next Sunday,
     halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
     half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
   but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
     we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
       of failed hope and broken promises,
       of forgotten children and frightened women,
     we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
     we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.

We are able to ponder our ashness with
   some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
   anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
   You Easter parade of newness.
   Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
     Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
     Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
   Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
     mercy and justice and peace and generosity.

We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

Walter Brueggemann (b. 1933)
Taken from his Prayers for a Privileged People (Nashville: Abingdon, 2008), pp. 27-28.

Desert Prayer

Jan Richardson- Painted Prayerbook.com

I am not asking you

to take this wilderness from me,

to remove this place of starkness

where I come to know

the wildness within me,

where I learn to call the names

of the ravenous beasts

that pace inside me,

to finger the brambles

that snake through my veins,

to taste the thirst

that tugs at my tongue.

But send me

tough angels,

sweet wine,

strong bread:

just enough.

American Christmas Card 2004

I met a man in Nigeria years ago,

an Ibo,

who said he had three hundred relatives

he knew by name.

His wife had just had a baby.

They were going to take it 

on foot

to be welcomed and marveled at

by as many of those relatives

as they could find,

even though

there was a war going on.

Wouldn’t you love to have been

such a famous baby?

I wish I could wave a magic wand

this Christmas,

and give every desperately lonesome

and hungry and lost American

man, woman, or child

the love and comfort and support

of an extended family.

Just two people and a babe in the manger,

given a heartless Government, 

is no survival scheme.

Kurt Vonnegut 

Editing Job

Carl Dennis

I'd cut the prologue, where God agrees 

To let his opponent, Satan, 

Torment our hero merely to prove 

What omniscience must know already: 

That Job's devotion isn't dependent 

On his prosperity. And how foolish of God 

If he supposes that Satan, once proven wrong, 

Will agree to forego his spite against creation 

For even a minute.

I'd keep the part where Job disdains 

His friends' assumption that somehow 

He must be to blame for his suffering, 

And the part where he makes a moving appeal 

To God for an explanation. 

I'd drop God's irrelevant, angry tirade 

About might and majesty versus weakness.

The issue is justice. Is our hero 

Impertinent for expecting his god 

To practice justice as well as preach it, 

For assuming the definition of justice 

That holds on earth holds as well above? 

Abraham isn't reproved in Genesis 

For asking, when God decides to burn Sodom, 

If it's fair to lump the good with the wicked.

Let Job be allowed to complain 

About his treatment as long as he wants to, 

For months, for decades,

And in this way secure his place forever 

In the hearts of all who believe 

That suffering shouldn't be silent, 

That grievances ought to be aired completely, 

Whether heard or not.

As for the end, if it's meant to suggest 

That patience will be rewarded, I'd cut it too. 

Or else I suggest at least adding a passage 

Where God, after replenishing Job's possessions, 

Comes to the tent where the man sits grieving 

To ask his pardon. How foolish of majesty 

To have assumed that Job's new family, 

New wife and children and servants, 

Would be an ample substitute for the old.

I Cry

Tupac Shakur

Sometimes when I'm alone

I Cry, 

Cause I am on my own.

The tears I cry are bitter and warm.

They flow with life but take no form

I Cry because my heart is torn.

I find it difficult to carry on. 

If I had an ear to confide in, 

I would cry among my treasured friend, 

but who do you know that stops that long, 

to help another carry on.

The world moves fast and it would rather pass by.

Then to stop and see what makes one cry, 

so painful and sad. 

And sometimes...

I Cry 

and no one cares about why. 

A Plankless Job

Luke 6:39-42

Lord,

With this plank

I only see drones

not doves.

With this plank

I only see darkness

instead of light.

With this plank

I only see 

what I want to see.

And now

You want

to remove it.

Just so I can

see things 

the way You do.

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light 

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water ski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

End of the Line

Luke 15:25-30

I

followed the rules,

did what I was told

and what do You do?

Where

in the rule book

is this

behavior forgiven?

Even more,

where

in the rule book

is this

behavior celebrated?

And even though

You insist

this is what 

Love does

to those who return

to Graceland

(in spite of the rule book)

there is

no way

I will 

enter this house.

That Business is Our Life

Luke 18:9-14

“We fear the publican’s acceptance 

because we know precisely what it means. 

It means that we will never be free 

until we are dead 

to the whole business 

of justifying ourselves. 

But since that business is our life,  

that means not until we are dead.”

--Robert Farrar Capon