Church

Poem

People in church hold their hands out
as if they can catch God like rain.
Here I am the black sheep
in a field of wolves. They salivate, their
shallow eyes turned on me all together like
rifle barrels and I blink and laugh,
unaware that I will be devoured.

The man  on the stage speaks before a
quiet drum kit and shouting screens
and they tell me its not a show.
His microphone bobs by his mouth
like a devoted horsefly.

He speaks the common tongue,
familiar in my ear, but
the syntax is strange.
He shoves the words together like
animal bones onto a necklace
for each wolf to wear like magic charms
when they go back to the forest.

He speaks and speaks and I see his
sharpened words being eaten by the people.
Perhaps wolves cannot proser without this pain.
Perhaps they cannot feel happiness if
they do not consume this hate.
They nod and amen as if he’s feeding them raspberries.
As if his are the last words ever to be spoken aloud
and they are not left wanting.

I don’t want the universe to misunderstand me.
I am devoted servant of possibility.
I believe that God is possible and
little goblins and fairies too.
I can believe in the unstoppable steam train of evolution.
I can believe in magic and music and neurons.

A man on an empty stage who
pretends he is not a ringleader, who
has convinced the audience they
do not attend a show with a pretty iron tongue
will never speak the possibility out of me.

Even when they circle me, prowling
for sinners, burying me under their glares,
as if to say:
I see you dissenter.

Even when my eyes well and they still
down their little cups of wine like shots of vodka.

Hear this:
Trust the man who is open,
who has not filled his chest with
concrete and decided things.
Trust the man who keeps a bit of
emptiness within him.

more by NOELLE CURRIE 

photograph by Jacob Wixom

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