I submitted this poem to Zephyrus, WKU's literary journal that generally rejects almost any and everything it encounters.
Lucky me, I am no longer rejected by one of Western's many writing extravaganza's.
They accepted this poem:
Body Language of Christ
A boy in church found Jesus
at the altar a couple of years
after pulling a Trojan
out of his wallet in the wooden pew.
He found Jesus and cried
and stomped around the small church,
hugging everyone
as they cried and sang and shouted Amen!
I cringed with every sloppy tear
and every drop of spit that
flew like a gnat out of the preacher’s mouth,
and I cringed with every hug from condom boy;
he smelled like decades,
like green shag carpet
and musty, shit-brown recliners
with specks of orange
and green; he smelled like a yellow and white
crochet blanket with a big
brown cross knitted in the middle.
The kind of blanket you want
to hug for warmth, but then the smell
of decades envelopes your entire body
as the smelly crochet folds
between your legs.
At this point, in this hug of
smelly decades, condom boy begins to rock
back and forth, crying,
I love you, he says, I want you to be saved.
He squeezes so that my chest
sinks inward, my ribs enclosed,
And he rocks—
hump, rock, hump, rock.
I focus on my fingers against his back,
they flitter with pat-pats
of acknowledgement. Okay, pat-
pat, I understand, flitter flitter.
He leaves, I breathe
until he comes back minutes later
for round two—
Hump, rock,
Hump, rock,
A crochet blanket
Sneaking between my legs.
Friday, April 9, 2010
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