Tag: religion

Agnosticism by Virginia Kane

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Agnosticism

At the exit I take for my lover’s home,
        someone has planted thousands of poppies.

Orange-red, they sway beneath a peeling Cracker Barrel billboard
        and a banner in all caps, demanding I repent.

Later, at the spiritual goods store,
        I search for Henry’s birthday present.

The punk clerk watches me finger calamus root, gold vials
        of prayer oil, Madonna statues poised like action figures,

answers my questions about tarot decks, rodent bones,
        match boxes stamped with the Sacred Heart.

In the end, I settle on a wax candle
        shaped like a massive cock, then wonder

what kind of person goes into a religious
        supplies shop and leaves with a gag gift.

I feel guilty the whole drive home, though
        and this makes me feel closer to God

since I was Catholic once, obedient
        as any blue flame commanded to burn.

Heading west, I decide that if I ever leave
        Appalachia, I’ll miss the highway signs,

violent promises on the hillside at dusk,
        neon yellow confidence that somewhere, hell awaits.

What I’m saying is, sometimes I sin
        just to feel like someone’s watching.

*

Virginia Kane is a poet and essayist. Her work has appeared in them., The Adroit Journal, Poet Lore, The Baltimore Review, swamp pink, MAYDAY, The Shore, and on the Ours Poetica web series. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she works at one store that sells new books and one store that sells used books.

Exhortation for any Innocence that Remains by Rachel Custer

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Exhortation for any Innocence that Remains

            Warning bell of a child, still, unwrung
as yet by what a tongue can hold, or what
            can hold a tongue: let yourself be small.

            Spent match, fire in another man’s belly,
word-weight in a dead language, rise up!
            O exhale-born, o hymn-child, humming home

            bearing your own song, held word (life
meaning what’s said, what’s said meaning
            what’s heard), rise quietly, like heat

            in a cheek burned first by turning. Warning
bell rung, unring yourself, become the truth
            that binds another’s tongue, enter first

            into any room as the haunt in a quarry’s eyes,
as a threat felt from behind. Dark child, planet
            eclipsed, waiting like a star waits out the day,

            let nightfall swallow all the drowning light.
Come forth, and when you come, come as you are,
            small and deadly, thrust Godward like a fist.

*

Rachel Custer is the author of Flatback Sally Country (Terrapin Books, 2003) and The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017). She was a 2019 NEA fellow. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, including Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, OSU: The Journal, B O D Y, ONE ART, and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. She currently resides online at rachelcuster.wordpress.com and songsonthewaytogod.substack.com.

Two Poems by Rachel Custer

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Arid the Valley Through Which I Worry My Faith

Mornings I wrap my hand
around my pocketknife

& walk the fourteen steps

from my front door
to the driver’s-side door of my car

the small animals caged inside my gaze

scrabbling
before this snake of a place

A girl is pinned behind the wooden mask

of what you believe
you know

(sometimes to hold something deadly can be a prayer)

in the nave of my undoing
in the hard pew of my teeth

you are the word amen

spilling again & again
from the grave of my mouth

*

God’s Country

Out beyond the industrial park
a graveyard of cars

rusts toward the new
millennium. A girl

is running away from everything.

(What would you do
with the weight of a thousand eyes?)

This town like the nightshirt
clenched inside her fists.

The handmade sign beside the highway
ripples in the wind: Son we still love you

Jesus will take you back.

*

Rachel Custer is the author of Flatback Sally Country (Terrapin Books, forthcoming 2023). The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017). An NEA arts fellow (poetry, 2019), she has previously published poetry, personal essays, and flash fiction in many literary journals. She lives in Indiana, and her work is constantly informed by and wrestles with the values and struggles of the rural Rust Belt. Her Christian faith is vital to her understanding of the world and her art.

Two Poems by Michael J. LaFrancis

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Assisted Living

Nan’s mother told her
she would not die from rust;

rather, she will pass away
when her life is all used up.

Her mother would live on
in her own home until she fell

out of it at ninety-three,
more than twenty years later.

Nan always said advice has to fit
the stage of life you are living in. Now

a nonagenarian herself, these words
are inspiring her. Nan has taken up

oil painting, bead making, praying on
rosary beads, calling neighbors by name.

After her husband of sixty-two years
gave up his spirit, she went to the cafeteria

at breakfast; the whole room came over
to extend condolences. Her heart heard

God’s promise—my house has many rooms,
I will prepare a place for you.

*

Cathedrals

We are centered,
in an ancient ecosystem,
of towering columns and spires
that seem to open heaven’s gate.

They are wearing a course red bark,
that can be one to two feet thick,
protecting their heartwood from fire,
Lucifer’s or anyone else’s.

They are fulfilling their promise,
with a quiet reverence, like apostles.
Their dark green and white ceilings
filter light, like stained glass windows.

Their parish is a connected community,
families surrounding proud parents;
some that have passed away.
Each is a resurrection from ashes and soot.

*

Michael J. LaFrancis is a trusted advisor, advocate, author and connector supporting individuals, groups and organizations aligning purpose and capabilities in service of their highest ideals. Writing poetry is a contemplative practice providing him with insight and inspiration for living a creative life. His poems are appearing in The City Key, Mocking Owl and Amethyst Review in the coming months.

LaFrancis’ hobbies include landscape gardening, nature walks, collecting fine art and writing. He and his partner Sharon are co-authors of their autobiography: Our Wonderful Life. They have two sons and have recently been promoted to being grandparents.

@michaeljlafrancis on Instagram