#prosepoem — Public Fediverse posts

“Rose-Colored Glasses” by Karen A VandenBos

Rose-Colored Glasses

Once upon a time bore the beginning of
your red stiletto heels and pitchers filled
with Spanish sangria. It was the days 
before life shrank from vibrant color and
abundance injected you with steroids of
joy. It was a time when you puckered 
your ruby-stained lips into a continuous
string of vowels and you braided a rosary
around your ankle. You ate grapes until the 
vines became sterile and discovered derelict 
poems curled in the skeletons of dead leaves 
that fell to the now fallow ground. Day after 
day you believed that it was your birthright 
to break all the rules and curse at the moon. 
When the pitchers were empty and the cold 
of winter knocked upon your door, it was said 
those rose-colored glasses had been ordered for 
your healing.

Copyright © 2026 Karen A VandenBos
All Rights Reserved

Karen A VandenBos was born on a warm July morn in Kalamazoo, MI. A PhD course in Shamanism taught her to travel between two worlds. A two-time Best of the Net nominee, her writing has been published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Feed the Holy, Moss Piglet, and others.

Please like and comment. Submit and subscribe for more great reads!

https://masticadoresusa.wordpress.com/submission-guidelines/

“Jonah Escapes Inland” by Walter Bargen

Jonah Escapes Inland

He doesn’t have to travel a thousand miles–he simply pushes open the building’s double doors, steps out onto the cinder-ridden sidewalk, and inhales the decomposing odors of flotsam and jetsam.  At this rise in elevation, lined with century oaks, punctuated with an intersection where cars feign stops before speeding on, all the sea would run downhill, unless the hill itself is a slow welling up of the sea.  

He searches for the flash of scales, the flip of a fin, the turbulence of a school of tuna roiling the sunstruck surface.   The morning-wet, whale-back asphalt glistens.   Standing on the curb, he has nothing to say.  He has listened to the doomsayers and the prodigal sons, the assessors and the hedonists, the elected and the lost, and he casts his lot into the depths, crosses the street through a storm of traffic, and is coughed up into another day of work as the fishy odor clings to his skin.  

Copyright © 2026 Walter Bargen
All Rights Reserved

Walter Bargen has published 26 or more books of poetry, including My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018), Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019), Pole Dancing in the Night Club of God (Red Mountain Press, 2020), and You Wounded Miracle (Liliom Verlag, 2021). In 2023, he released Too Late to Turn Back (Singing Bone Press, 2023) and Radiation Diary: Return to the Sea (Lamar University Literary Press, 2023). He lives in Ashland, Missouri, with his wife and countless cats, raccoons, and snakes. He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009).  

Submit to MasticadoresUSA and subscribe for more great reads!

https://masticadoresusa.wordpress.com/2024/10/31/masticadoresusa-submission-guidelines-october-30-2024/

#ScribesAndMakers ~ Share something you've been working on this month.

I wrote one haiku, one longer-form poem and this week a new stream of consciousness-style prose poem. I favour flash prose poems.

I'm aiming for more prose poems this month.

#Haiku #ProsePoem #Writing

#ScribesAndMakers ~ Share something you've been working on this month.

I wrote one haiku, one longer-form poem and this week a new stream of consciousness-style prose poem. I favour flash prose poems.

I'm aiming for more prose poems this month.

#Haiku #ProsePoem #Writing

#ScribesAndMakers ~ Share something you've been working on this month.

I wrote one haiku, one longer-form poem and this week a new stream of consciousness-style prose poem. I favour flash prose poems.

I'm aiming for more prose poems this month.

#Haiku #ProsePoem #Writing

#ScribesAndMakers ~ Share something you've been working on this month.

I wrote one haiku, one longer-form poem and this week a new stream of consciousness-style prose poem. I favour flash prose poems.

I'm aiming for more prose poems this month.

#Haiku #ProsePoem #Writing

#ScribesAndMakers ~ Share something you've been working on this month.

I wrote one haiku, one longer-form poem and this week a new stream of consciousness-style prose poem. I favour flash prose poems.

I'm aiming for more prose poems this month.

#Haiku #ProsePoem #Writing

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

Strike

The phobia of a copperhead strike
is made real by the lunge of a
lawnmower into the brush to shred
the coiling orange and brown with
a screaming whump only to realize
that it was an eastern box turtle
I had set upon.

Once again what I am afraid of 
has led me to destroy what I love 
and I weep, wondering if I will ever 
become one whose perceived fears 
are not acted on.

I did not look to see if the 
slowmover was dead
but I knew. I could see the 
bloody pieces of her
shell scattered across
the lawn.

September 3, 1996

My prose poem "Stone is too soft" is online at Eye to the Telescope
https://eyetothetelescope.com/archives/061issue.html
#specpo #space #communication #sciencefiction #prosepoem

My prose poem "Stone is too soft" is online at Eye to the Telescope
https://eyetothetelescope.com/archives/061issue.html
#specpo #space #communication #sciencefiction #prosepoem

My prose poem "Stone is too soft" is online at Eye to the Telescope
https://eyetothetelescope.com/archives/061issue.html
#specpo #space #communication #sciencefiction #prosepoem

My prose poem "Stone is too soft" is online at Eye to the Telescope
https://eyetothetelescope.com/archives/061issue.html
#specpo #space #communication #sciencefiction #prosepoem

My prose poem "Stone is too soft" is online at Eye to the Telescope
https://eyetothetelescope.com/archives/061issue.html
#specpo #space #communication #sciencefiction #prosepoem

My wife Natalie’s prose chapbook “Shifts” is now available to order from Bottlecap Press!

“In ‘Shifts,’ Natalie DeVaull-Robichaud draws on images of the natural world to unfold the tensions and hidden darknesses we live with as consumers, mothers, children.” #chapbook #prosepoem #flashfiction

Shifts, by Natalie DeVaull-Rob...

My wife Natalie’s prose chapbook “Shifts” is now available to order from Bottlecap Press!

“In ‘Shifts,’ Natalie DeVaull-Robichaud draws on images of the natural world to unfold the tensions and hidden darknesses we live with as consumers, mothers, children.” #chapbook #prosepoem #flashfiction

Shifts, by Natalie DeVaull-Rob...

My wife Natalie’s prose chapbook “Shifts” is now available to order from Bottlecap Press!

“In ‘Shifts,’ Natalie DeVaull-Robichaud draws on images of the natural world to unfold the tensions and hidden darknesses we live with as consumers, mothers, children.” #chapbook #prosepoem #flashfiction

Shifts, by Natalie DeVaull-Rob...

My wife Natalie’s prose chapbook “Shifts” is now available to order from Bottlecap Press!

“In ‘Shifts,’ Natalie DeVaull-Robichaud draws on images of the natural world to unfold the tensions and hidden darknesses we live with as consumers, mothers, children.” #chapbook #prosepoem #flashfiction

Shifts, by Natalie DeVaull-Rob...

The Sodden Astronomer

They say, Do not look at the stars,
or you will step into holes
and sink your shoes in mud.

So you can keep your eyes
fixed on the ground,
safe from puddles,
safe from falling,
and miss the lights
burning above in the dark—

except for a stolen glance,
a hurried sip of heaven.

Or you can throw
caution to the wind,
lift your thirsty face
to those bright jewels
sewn into black velvet,

and stumble on
with wet feet.

October 27, 1988 (edited June 2026)
Curridabat, Costa Rica

Part of the continuing Respectful American series, a selection of writings from my travel journals from Central America in 1988

The Sodden Astronomer

They say, Do not look at the stars,
or you will step into holes
and sink your shoes in mud.

So you can keep your eyes
fixed on the ground,
safe from puddles,
safe from falling,
and miss the lights
burning above in the dark—

except for a stolen glance,
a hurried sip of heaven.

Or you can throw
caution to the wind,
lift your thirsty face
to those bright jewels
sewn into black velvet,

and stumble on
with wet feet.

October 27, 1988 (edited June 2026)
Curridabat, Costa Rica

Part of the continuing Respectful American series, a selection of writings from my travel journals from Central America in 1988

The Sodden Astronomer

They say, Do not look at the stars,
or you will step into holes
and sink your shoes in mud.

So you can keep your eyes
fixed on the ground,
safe from puddles,
safe from falling,
and miss the lights
burning above in the dark—

except for a stolen glance,
a hurried sip of heaven.

Or you can throw
caution to the wind,
lift your thirsty face
to those bright jewels
sewn into black velvet,

and stumble on
with wet feet.

October 27, 1988 (edited June 2026)
Curridabat, Costa Rica

Part of the continuing Respectful American series, a selection of writings from my travel journals from Central America in 1988

The Sodden Astronomer

They say, Do not look at the stars,
or you will step into holes
and sink your shoes in mud.

So you can keep your eyes
fixed on the ground,
safe from puddles,
safe from falling,
and miss the lights
burning above in the dark—

except for a stolen glance,
a hurried sip of heaven.

Or you can throw
caution to the wind,
lift your thirsty face
to those bright jewels
sewn into black velvet,

and stumble on
with wet feet.

October 27, 1988 (edited June 2026)
Curridabat, Costa Rica

Part of the continuing Respectful American series, a selection of writings from my travel journals from Central America in 1988

Culdesac

down here on the path 
beside the railroad tracks 
with the freight train 
slowly going by 
the urge to hop on one 
of the gravel laden cars 
and let it take me 
far away from here 
is almost overpowering

as usual i do not 
make the leap and 
later i find myself 
walking past the old man 
with a broom sweeping 
the street to where the path 
turns back upon itself 
out past the little girl 
on her mama's back 
who says hi 

i try to smile in return 
but all i can think about 
is how did i ever get so lost

July 9, 2015

Culdesac

down here on the path 
beside the railroad tracks 
with the freight train 
slowly going by 
the urge to hop on one 
of the gravel laden cars 
and let it take me 
far away from here 
is almost overpowering

as usual i do not 
make the leap and 
later i find myself 
walking past the old man 
with a broom sweeping 
the street to where the path 
turns back upon itself 
out past the little girl 
on her mama's back 
who says hi 

i try to smile in return 
but all i can think about 
is how did i ever get so lost

July 9, 2015

Culdesac

down here on the path 
beside the railroad tracks 
with the freight train 
slowly going by 
the urge to hop on one 
of the gravel laden cars 
and let it take me 
far away from here 
is almost overpowering

as usual i do not 
make the leap and 
later i find myself 
walking past the old man 
with a broom sweeping 
the street to where the path 
turns back upon itself 
out past the little girl 
on her mama's back 
who says hi 

i try to smile in return 
but all i can think about 
is how did i ever get so lost

July 9, 2015

Culdesac

down here on the path 
beside the railroad tracks 
with the freight train 
slowly going by 
the urge to hop on one 
of the gravel laden cars 
and let it take me 
far away from here 
is almost overpowering

as usual i do not 
make the leap and 
later i find myself 
walking past the old man 
with a broom sweeping 
the street to where the path 
turns back upon itself 
out past the little girl 
on her mama's back 
who says hi 

i try to smile in return 
but all i can think about 
is how did i ever get so lost

July 9, 2015

Culdesac

down here on the path 
beside the railroad tracks 
with the freight train 
slowly going by 
the urge to hop on one 
of the gravel laden cars 
and let it take me 
far away from here 
is almost overpowering

as usual i do not 
make the leap and 
later i find myself 
walking past the old man 
with a broom sweeping 
the street to where the path 
turns back upon itself 
out past the little girl 
on her mama's back 
who says hi 

i try to smile in return 
but all i can think about 
is how did i ever get so lost

July 9, 2015

"There is a point where the sun just wears you out and there's nothing left of your label, no signifier of who you really are at all, beyond a overly simplified set of data points that spin off to the horizon. We live in an age of gods and monsters and reified capital, and everywhere we turn the glare of their surveillance peels away soul and bone. Flocks of ice cold eyes at every intersection, each stranger's door we pass both locked and loaded-- all to have us under the god-company's relentless regard always. Don't you feel like prey, ears up, tendons tense, watched and haunted and hunted? When, I wonder, will we wrench ourselves around, make good on our gaudy gold and red devil heritage, and get back to the business of living, breathing, and beating down anyone who would put out or imprison our fire. We killed one god, and now these new monsters need humbling."

--Fireball Empties of Ewing
#fireballemptiesofewing
#fbeoe

#poetry
#poem
#prosepoem

"There is a point where the sun just wears you out and there's nothing left of your label, no signifier of who you really are at all, beyond a overly simplified set of data points that spin off to the horizon. We live in an age of gods and monsters and reified capital, and everywhere we turn the glare of their surveillance peels away soul and bone. Flocks of ice cold eyes at every intersection, each stranger's door we pass both locked and loaded-- all to have us under the god-company's relentless regard always. Don't you feel like prey, ears up, tendons tense, watched and haunted and hunted? When, I wonder, will we wrench ourselves around, make good on our gaudy gold and red devil heritage, and get back to the business of living, breathing, and beating down anyone who would put out or imprison our fire. We killed one god, and now these new monsters need humbling."

--Fireball Empties of Ewing
#fireballemptiesofewing
#fbeoe

#poetry
#poem
#prosepoem

"There is a point where the sun just wears you out and there's nothing left of your label, no signifier of who you really are at all, beyond a overly simplified set of data points that spin off to the horizon. We live in an age of gods and monsters and reified capital, and everywhere we turn the glare of their surveillance peels away soul and bone. Flocks of ice cold eyes at every intersection, each stranger's door we pass both locked and loaded-- all to have us under the god-company's relentless regard always. Don't you feel like prey, ears up, tendons tense, watched and haunted and hunted? When, I wonder, will we wrench ourselves around, make good on our gaudy gold and red devil heritage, and get back to the business of living, breathing, and beating down anyone who would put out or imprison our fire. We killed one god, and now these new monsters need humbling."

--Fireball Empties of Ewing
#fireballemptiesofewing
#fbeoe

#poetry
#poem
#prosepoem

The Places in My Dreams

The world within, the world of my dreams, is similar to the one I walk through every day. But it is different.

The streets bend strangely. The rooms open where they should not. The people and places are often indifferent to me, and sometimes, they are even antagonistic.

They are not merely people and places. They are representations of emotions I have not yet worked through from the previous day. Sixteen waking hours are not enough to fully grasp all that I have experienced, endured, feared, desired, regretted, or misunderstood.

And so, in the night, these things come alive.

They take on faces. They become houses, roads, crowds, locked doors, ruined landscapes, familiar rooms made unfamiliar. They guide me through the shadow lands—not always kindly, but truthfully. They show me what I could not see while awake.

My dreams are not escapes from the day.

They are the day returning in another form, asking to be understood.

Some nights I find myself back in places I have never been, and yet they feel older than memory. A school that was never my school. A church with hallways that keep multiplying. A childhood home rearranged by grief. A city I know by instinct, though no map has ever held it.

In these places, I am often trying to get somewhere.

I am late. I am lost. I am looking for someone. I am trying to explain myself to people who will not listen. I am searching for a room, a door, a vehicle, a path, a way home. Sometimes I am carrying something fragile. Sometimes I have forgotten what I was supposed to carry. Sometimes I am responsible for a task I do not understand, surrounded by people who seem to know the rules but refuse to tell me.

This is the cruelty of the dream world: everyone else seems initiated.

They move through the strange landscape as if it is ordinary. They know which hallway leads out, which road is safe, which bus to board, which door not to open. I am the stranger in a world that somehow belongs to me. I am the dreamer, and yet I am not in control.

Perhaps this is why the places feel antagonistic. They do not hate me. They are simply unwilling to flatter me. They will not pretend I am finished with what I have not faced. They will not comfort me with easy explanations. They turn my emotions into architecture and ask me to walk through them.

Fear becomes a narrow bridge.

Regret becomes a house with too many locked rooms.

Anger becomes a storm on the edge of town.

Shame becomes a crowd that sees me before I am ready to be seen.

Grief becomes a road that always returns to the same place.

And longing—longing becomes a light in a window I can never quite reach.

I wake from these dreams with the feeling that I have traveled farther than my body could have gone. I have crossed cities, fields, stairways, basements, sanctuaries, ruins, and train stations. I have spoken with the dead and avoided the living. I have been judged by strangers and ignored by friends. I have wandered through the unfinished weather of my own soul.

Then morning comes, and the ordinary world returns.

The walls are where I left them. The floor is solid. The dog needs to go out. The coffee waits. The phone glows with its small demands. The day begins again, pretending to be separate from the night.

But I know better.

The dream has left its residue. A feeling follows me, sometimes faint, sometimes heavy. A hallway from the dream lingers inside the hallway of the house. A face from the night appears behind the face of someone I know. A mood clings to the morning like fog.

The shadow lands do not vanish when I wake.

They retreat.

They wait beneath the visible world, beneath errands and conversations, beneath sermons and chores, beneath the version of myself that knows how to answer when someone asks, “How are you?”

I say, “I’m fine.”

But somewhere beneath that answer, an entire city is still burning, or flooding, or rebuilding itself in the dark.

The Places in My Dreams

The world within, the world of my dreams, is similar to the one I walk through every day. But it is different.

The streets bend strangely. The rooms open where they should not. The people and places are often indifferent to me, and sometimes, they are even antagonistic.

They are not merely people and places. They are representations of emotions I have not yet worked through from the previous day. Sixteen waking hours are not enough to fully grasp all that I have experienced, endured, feared, desired, regretted, or misunderstood.

And so, in the night, these things come alive.

They take on faces. They become houses, roads, crowds, locked doors, ruined landscapes, familiar rooms made unfamiliar. They guide me through the shadow lands—not always kindly, but truthfully. They show me what I could not see while awake.

My dreams are not escapes from the day.

They are the day returning in another form, asking to be understood.

Some nights I find myself back in places I have never been, and yet they feel older than memory. A school that was never my school. A church with hallways that keep multiplying. A childhood home rearranged by grief. A city I know by instinct, though no map has ever held it.

In these places, I am often trying to get somewhere.

I am late. I am lost. I am looking for someone. I am trying to explain myself to people who will not listen. I am searching for a room, a door, a vehicle, a path, a way home. Sometimes I am carrying something fragile. Sometimes I have forgotten what I was supposed to carry. Sometimes I am responsible for a task I do not understand, surrounded by people who seem to know the rules but refuse to tell me.

This is the cruelty of the dream world: everyone else seems initiated.

They move through the strange landscape as if it is ordinary. They know which hallway leads out, which road is safe, which bus to board, which door not to open. I am the stranger in a world that somehow belongs to me. I am the dreamer, and yet I am not in control.

Perhaps this is why the places feel antagonistic. They do not hate me. They are simply unwilling to flatter me. They will not pretend I am finished with what I have not faced. They will not comfort me with easy explanations. They turn my emotions into architecture and ask me to walk through them.

Fear becomes a narrow bridge.

Regret becomes a house with too many locked rooms.

Anger becomes a storm on the edge of town.

Shame becomes a crowd that sees me before I am ready to be seen.

Grief becomes a road that always returns to the same place.

And longing—longing becomes a light in a window I can never quite reach.

I wake from these dreams with the feeling that I have traveled farther than my body could have gone. I have crossed cities, fields, stairways, basements, sanctuaries, ruins, and train stations. I have spoken with the dead and avoided the living. I have been judged by strangers and ignored by friends. I have wandered through the unfinished weather of my own soul.

Then morning comes, and the ordinary world returns.

The walls are where I left them. The floor is solid. The dog needs to go out. The coffee waits. The phone glows with its small demands. The day begins again, pretending to be separate from the night.

But I know better.

The dream has left its residue. A feeling follows me, sometimes faint, sometimes heavy. A hallway from the dream lingers inside the hallway of the house. A face from the night appears behind the face of someone I know. A mood clings to the morning like fog.

The shadow lands do not vanish when I wake.

They retreat.

They wait beneath the visible world, beneath errands and conversations, beneath sermons and chores, beneath the version of myself that knows how to answer when someone asks, “How are you?”

I say, “I’m fine.”

But somewhere beneath that answer, an entire city is still burning, or flooding, or rebuilding itself in the dark.

The Places in My Dreams

The world within, the world of my dreams, is similar to the one I walk through every day. But it is different.

The streets bend strangely. The rooms open where they should not. The people and places are often indifferent to me, and sometimes, they are even antagonistic.

They are not merely people and places. They are representations of emotions I have not yet worked through from the previous day. Sixteen waking hours are not enough to fully grasp all that I have experienced, endured, feared, desired, regretted, or misunderstood.

And so, in the night, these things come alive.

They take on faces. They become houses, roads, crowds, locked doors, ruined landscapes, familiar rooms made unfamiliar. They guide me through the shadow lands—not always kindly, but truthfully. They show me what I could not see while awake.

My dreams are not escapes from the day.

They are the day returning in another form, asking to be understood.

Some nights I find myself back in places I have never been, and yet they feel older than memory. A school that was never my school. A church with hallways that keep multiplying. A childhood home rearranged by grief. A city I know by instinct, though no map has ever held it.

In these places, I am often trying to get somewhere.

I am late. I am lost. I am looking for someone. I am trying to explain myself to people who will not listen. I am searching for a room, a door, a vehicle, a path, a way home. Sometimes I am carrying something fragile. Sometimes I have forgotten what I was supposed to carry. Sometimes I am responsible for a task I do not understand, surrounded by people who seem to know the rules but refuse to tell me.

This is the cruelty of the dream world: everyone else seems initiated.

They move through the strange landscape as if it is ordinary. They know which hallway leads out, which road is safe, which bus to board, which door not to open. I am the stranger in a world that somehow belongs to me. I am the dreamer, and yet I am not in control.

Perhaps this is why the places feel antagonistic. They do not hate me. They are simply unwilling to flatter me. They will not pretend I am finished with what I have not faced. They will not comfort me with easy explanations. They turn my emotions into architecture and ask me to walk through them.

Fear becomes a narrow bridge.

Regret becomes a house with too many locked rooms.

Anger becomes a storm on the edge of town.

Shame becomes a crowd that sees me before I am ready to be seen.

Grief becomes a road that always returns to the same place.

And longing—longing becomes a light in a window I can never quite reach.

I wake from these dreams with the feeling that I have traveled farther than my body could have gone. I have crossed cities, fields, stairways, basements, sanctuaries, ruins, and train stations. I have spoken with the dead and avoided the living. I have been judged by strangers and ignored by friends. I have wandered through the unfinished weather of my own soul.

Then morning comes, and the ordinary world returns.

The walls are where I left them. The floor is solid. The dog needs to go out. The coffee waits. The phone glows with its small demands. The day begins again, pretending to be separate from the night.

But I know better.

The dream has left its residue. A feeling follows me, sometimes faint, sometimes heavy. A hallway from the dream lingers inside the hallway of the house. A face from the night appears behind the face of someone I know. A mood clings to the morning like fog.

The shadow lands do not vanish when I wake.

They retreat.

They wait beneath the visible world, beneath errands and conversations, beneath sermons and chores, beneath the version of myself that knows how to answer when someone asks, “How are you?”

I say, “I’m fine.”

But somewhere beneath that answer, an entire city is still burning, or flooding, or rebuilding itself in the dark.

The Places in My Dreams

The world within, the world of my dreams, is similar to the one I walk through every day. But it is different.

The streets bend strangely. The rooms open where they should not. The people and places are often indifferent to me, and sometimes, they are even antagonistic.

They are not merely people and places. They are representations of emotions I have not yet worked through from the previous day. Sixteen waking hours are not enough to fully grasp all that I have experienced, endured, feared, desired, regretted, or misunderstood.

And so, in the night, these things come alive.

They take on faces. They become houses, roads, crowds, locked doors, ruined landscapes, familiar rooms made unfamiliar. They guide me through the shadow lands—not always kindly, but truthfully. They show me what I could not see while awake.

My dreams are not escapes from the day.

They are the day returning in another form, asking to be understood.

Some nights I find myself back in places I have never been, and yet they feel older than memory. A school that was never my school. A church with hallways that keep multiplying. A childhood home rearranged by grief. A city I know by instinct, though no map has ever held it.

In these places, I am often trying to get somewhere.

I am late. I am lost. I am looking for someone. I am trying to explain myself to people who will not listen. I am searching for a room, a door, a vehicle, a path, a way home. Sometimes I am carrying something fragile. Sometimes I have forgotten what I was supposed to carry. Sometimes I am responsible for a task I do not understand, surrounded by people who seem to know the rules but refuse to tell me.

This is the cruelty of the dream world: everyone else seems initiated.

They move through the strange landscape as if it is ordinary. They know which hallway leads out, which road is safe, which bus to board, which door not to open. I am the stranger in a world that somehow belongs to me. I am the dreamer, and yet I am not in control.

Perhaps this is why the places feel antagonistic. They do not hate me. They are simply unwilling to flatter me. They will not pretend I am finished with what I have not faced. They will not comfort me with easy explanations. They turn my emotions into architecture and ask me to walk through them.

Fear becomes a narrow bridge.

Regret becomes a house with too many locked rooms.

Anger becomes a storm on the edge of town.

Shame becomes a crowd that sees me before I am ready to be seen.

Grief becomes a road that always returns to the same place.

And longing—longing becomes a light in a window I can never quite reach.

I wake from these dreams with the feeling that I have traveled farther than my body could have gone. I have crossed cities, fields, stairways, basements, sanctuaries, ruins, and train stations. I have spoken with the dead and avoided the living. I have been judged by strangers and ignored by friends. I have wandered through the unfinished weather of my own soul.

Then morning comes, and the ordinary world returns.

The walls are where I left them. The floor is solid. The dog needs to go out. The coffee waits. The phone glows with its small demands. The day begins again, pretending to be separate from the night.

But I know better.

The dream has left its residue. A feeling follows me, sometimes faint, sometimes heavy. A hallway from the dream lingers inside the hallway of the house. A face from the night appears behind the face of someone I know. A mood clings to the morning like fog.

The shadow lands do not vanish when I wake.

They retreat.

They wait beneath the visible world, beneath errands and conversations, beneath sermons and chores, beneath the version of myself that knows how to answer when someone asks, “How are you?”

I say, “I’m fine.”

But somewhere beneath that answer, an entire city is still burning, or flooding, or rebuilding itself in the dark.

The Places in My Dreams

The world within, the world of my dreams, is similar to the one I walk through every day. But it is different.

The streets bend strangely. The rooms open where they should not. The people and places are often indifferent to me, and sometimes, they are even antagonistic.

They are not merely people and places. They are representations of emotions I have not yet worked through from the previous day. Sixteen waking hours are not enough to fully grasp all that I have experienced, endured, feared, desired, regretted, or misunderstood.

And so, in the night, these things come alive.

They take on faces. They become houses, roads, crowds, locked doors, ruined landscapes, familiar rooms made unfamiliar. They guide me through the shadow lands—not always kindly, but truthfully. They show me what I could not see while awake.

My dreams are not escapes from the day.

They are the day returning in another form, asking to be understood.

Some nights I find myself back in places I have never been, and yet they feel older than memory. A school that was never my school. A church with hallways that keep multiplying. A childhood home rearranged by grief. A city I know by instinct, though no map has ever held it.

In these places, I am often trying to get somewhere.

I am late. I am lost. I am looking for someone. I am trying to explain myself to people who will not listen. I am searching for a room, a door, a vehicle, a path, a way home. Sometimes I am carrying something fragile. Sometimes I have forgotten what I was supposed to carry. Sometimes I am responsible for a task I do not understand, surrounded by people who seem to know the rules but refuse to tell me.

This is the cruelty of the dream world: everyone else seems initiated.

They move through the strange landscape as if it is ordinary. They know which hallway leads out, which road is safe, which bus to board, which door not to open. I am the stranger in a world that somehow belongs to me. I am the dreamer, and yet I am not in control.

Perhaps this is why the places feel antagonistic. They do not hate me. They are simply unwilling to flatter me. They will not pretend I am finished with what I have not faced. They will not comfort me with easy explanations. They turn my emotions into architecture and ask me to walk through them.

Fear becomes a narrow bridge.

Regret becomes a house with too many locked rooms.

Anger becomes a storm on the edge of town.

Shame becomes a crowd that sees me before I am ready to be seen.

Grief becomes a road that always returns to the same place.

And longing—longing becomes a light in a window I can never quite reach.

I wake from these dreams with the feeling that I have traveled farther than my body could have gone. I have crossed cities, fields, stairways, basements, sanctuaries, ruins, and train stations. I have spoken with the dead and avoided the living. I have been judged by strangers and ignored by friends. I have wandered through the unfinished weather of my own soul.

Then morning comes, and the ordinary world returns.

The walls are where I left them. The floor is solid. The dog needs to go out. The coffee waits. The phone glows with its small demands. The day begins again, pretending to be separate from the night.

But I know better.

The dream has left its residue. A feeling follows me, sometimes faint, sometimes heavy. A hallway from the dream lingers inside the hallway of the house. A face from the night appears behind the face of someone I know. A mood clings to the morning like fog.

The shadow lands do not vanish when I wake.

They retreat.

They wait beneath the visible world, beneath errands and conversations, beneath sermons and chores, beneath the version of myself that knows how to answer when someone asks, “How are you?”

I say, “I’m fine.”

But somewhere beneath that answer, an entire city is still burning, or flooding, or rebuilding itself in the dark.

New poem: Falling

A prose poem about the physics of devotion.

https://walljm.com/poetry/2026-06-20-falling.html

#love #metaphor #prosepoem #relationship #gravity #poetry

New poem: Falling

A prose poem about the physics of devotion.

https://walljm.com/poetry/2026-06-20-falling.html

#love #metaphor #prosepoem #relationship #gravity #poetry

#MastoPrompt
#wall
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

#MastoPrompt
#wall
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

#MastoPrompt
#wall
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

#MastoPrompt
#wall
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

#MastoPrompt
#wall
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

Angel-makers

A light arcs above the canopy. Meteor or flare gun? We are not alone, gang of atoms, star seeds, angel-makers. Let’s work on our rhetoric, immense first person plural. Say […]

https://cacorbell.com/2026/05/15/angel-makers/
#angel #bone #journal #poem #prosepoem #rhetoric #tree

Angel-makers

A light arcs above the canopy. Meteor or flare gun? We are not alone, gang of atoms, star seeds, angel-makers. Let’s work on our rhetoric, immense first person plural. Say […]

https://cacorbell.com/2026/05/15/angel-makers/
#angel #bone #journal #poem #prosepoem #rhetoric #tree

Angel-makers

A light arcs above the canopy. Meteor or flare gun? We are not alone, gang of atoms, star seeds, angel-makers. Let’s work on our rhetoric, immense first person plural. Say […]

https://cacorbell.com/2026/05/15/angel-makers/
#angel #bone #journal #poem #prosepoem #rhetoric #tree

#Theology #Apologia Perhaps-slippery #Metaphor #Peace #ProsePoem
Yet more Joubert, transl Auster:
"The staircase that leads us to God. What does it matter if it is makae-beleivfe, if we really climb it/ What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is mader of marble or wood, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to thoser who do not climb it."

#Theology #Apologia Perhaps-slippery #Metaphor #Peace #ProsePoem
Yet more Joubert, transl Auster:
"The staircase that leads us to God. What does it matter if it is makae-beleivfe, if we really climb it/ What difference does it make who builds it, or if it is mader of marble or wood, of brick, stone, or mud? The essential thing is that it be solid and that in climbing it we feel the peace that is inaccessible to thoser who do not climb it."

#MastoPrompt
#gluttonous
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

#MastoPrompt
#gluttonous
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

#MastoPrompt
#gluttonous
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

#MastoPrompt
#gluttonous
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

#MastoPrompt
#gluttonous
#writing
#creativewriting
#smallstories
#prosepoem
@stevencudahy

Made a Mural of Me

I have walked streets where the walls remember
better than the governments do.

I have stood beneath the painted faces
of the disappeared, the assassinated,
the catechists, the campesinos,
the students, the mothers,
the ones whose names were spoken once with terror
and now are spoken with flowers.

I have seen their eyes in plaster and pigment,
their halos done in cheap color,
their mouths half open as if the wall itself
were still trying to tell the story
of what was done to them.

In Central America,
I learned that a wall can become a gospel
when the newspapers lie.
A wall can become an archive
when the official files are burned,
when the generals call murder peace,
when the empire calls bloodshed stability,
when the poor are told to forget
for the sake of moving on.

But the wall does not move on.

The wall says: here.
The wall says: this happened.
The wall says: this child had a name.
This priest had hands.
This woman had laughter.
This union worker had a mother.
This martyr did not die in abstraction,
did not perish as an example,
did not vanish into a sermon illustration.
They were flesh.
They were breath.
They were somebody’s beloved.

And I have seen it elsewhere too.

Not only there, where memory was brushed onto concrete
beneath the long shadow of rifles and oligarchs,
but here,
in this empire’s marble reach,
in this capital of speeches and signatures,
in neighborhoods of D.C. where color rises up
against erasure,
where the dead look down from brick walls
and ask the living what exactly we are doing
with the testimony they left us.

I have walked those streets too,
where murals bloom like wounds that refuse to close,
where every face says both remember
and why again?

That is the ache of it.

Because a mural is beautiful,
but it is also an indictment.

A mural is what happens
when grief runs out of sanctioned places to go.
When cemeteries are too quiet,
when courtrooms are too compromised,
when history books are too polite,
when churches would rather canonize the dead
than stand beside the threatened living,
someone climbs a ladder with paint
and says:
You will not make us forget.

And yet even that holy act contains a heartbreak.

Because every new mural is also a confession
that we have failed again.

We say we honor the martyrs.
We paint them large.
We ring them with light.
We write their names in careful letters.
We tell their stories to our children.
We call them seeds.
We call them saints.
We call them witnesses.

But if we must keep making more walls,
if there is always another name,
another mother,
another child,
another prophet with blood on their shirt,
another journalist, another dreamer, another body,
then our memorials are not only songs of praise.
They are laments.
They are accusations.
They are unfinished prayers.

I do not want a world
where we become very skilled
at decorating the aftermath.

I do not want justice outsourced to artists
because legislators are cowards,
because police departments close ranks,
because borders harden,
because markets consume,
because nations baptize their violence
and then ask poets to clean up the silence.

I am grateful for the murals.
God, I am grateful for them.
For the ones who paint the saints with brown hands
and tired eyes.
For the ones who make a wall preach.
For the ones who turn an alley into a liturgy.
For the ones who refuse the second death,
the death of being forgotten.

But I am tired of needing them.

Tired of standing before another radiant face
and knowing radiance came at the price of a bullet.
Tired of admiring the colors
while knowing the color had to cover over grief
too large for speech.
Tired of telling the story again
because the engines that made the story
were never dismantled,
only rebranded, relocated, repainted.

That is the terrible genius of empire.
It learns to tolerate memorials
so long as the machinery of martyr-making stays intact.

Put the face on the wall.
Name the school after the slain.
Hold the vigil.
Light the candle.
Share the quote.
Then fund the weapons.
Protect the system.
Discredit the witness.
Fortify the border.
Ignore the neighborhood.
Silence the poor.
And when the next body falls,
commission another mural.

No.

There is something obscene
about praising the courage of the dead
while refusing the cost of solidarity with the living.

There is something blasphemous
about loving Romero on the wall
but not listening to prophets now.
About cherishing painted martyrs in San Salvador
and neglecting crucified people in Washington,
in detention centers,
in poor towns,
in Black and brown neighborhoods,
in places where the state still knows how to kneel
on a neck,
how to disappear a future,
how to call a human being illegal
before making them dead in spirit.

So yes,
I have walked among the murals.
And yes,
they have taught me.

They taught me that memory is resistance.
That color can be a form of defiance.
That beauty can tell the truth
when official language becomes a mask for murder.
They taught me the communion of saints
sometimes looks less like stained glass
and more like chipped paint on cinder block.
Less like cathedral windows
and more like public walls under open sky.

They taught me that the martyrs are still speaking.
Not only from heaven.
From brick.
From alley.
From barrio.
From the side of a building everyone passes
on the way to work,
on the way to school,
on the way to forgetting.

And they taught me to shudder.

Because sometimes, standing there,
I have had the strange and terrible thought:

One day they could make a mural of me.

Not because I seek glory.
Not because I imagine myself noble.
Not because I think suffering makes a person pure.
But because in a world like this,
where truth still threatens power,
where solidarity still has a price,
where loving the crucified too closely
can still get you crucified,
any one of us who dares enough
might end up as paint.

Made a mural of me.

Put me on a wall with the others.
Give me a background of sunburst gold,
or deep blue,
or the red of blood transfigured into witness.
Paint my face calmer than I ever was in life.
Smooth out my fear.
Make me look brave.

But if you do,
let the mural say I did not want this.

Let it say I wanted fewer murals,
not more.

Let it say I wanted children to know these names
without needing to inherit their wounds.
Let it say I wanted nations to repent
before artists had to remember for them.
Let it say I wanted churches
to become sanctuaries of the endangered
instead of galleries of the already slain.
Let it say I wanted the wall
to go blank someday,
not from amnesia,
but from justice.

That is my prayer now.

Not that we stop honoring the martyrs.
Never that.
Paint them.
Sing them.
Tell them.
Teach them.
Write them in the streets and on the doors
and in the marrow of the young.

But also:
stop making so many of them.

Let there come a day
when the painters have to find another subject.
When the ladders lean against walls
for festivals instead of funerals.
When color is used for delight
and not only for defiance.
When remembrance is no longer emergency labor.
When the living are protected enough
that martyrdom becomes rare,
and rare enough
that every new death shocks us again.

Until then,
the walls will keep preaching.

And I will keep listening
with gratitude and grief,
with reverence and anger,
with hope cracked open but not empty.

Because every mural is a promise
the dead make to the living:

We are still here.
We are watching what you do next.
Do not honor us
by becoming connoisseurs of tragedy.
Honor us
by ending the thing that killed us.

And until that day,
the paint will keep drying,
and the faces will keep multiplying,
and the walls will keep learning names
they should never have had to learn.

And I will stand before them,
heart broken open,
thinking:

this wall should be empty by now.

Made a Mural of Me

I have walked streets where the walls remember
better than the governments do.

I have stood beneath the painted faces
of the disappeared, the assassinated,
the catechists, the campesinos,
the students, the mothers,
the ones whose names were spoken once with terror
and now are spoken with flowers.

I have seen their eyes in plaster and pigment,
their halos done in cheap color,
their mouths half open as if the wall itself
were still trying to tell the story
of what was done to them.

In Central America,
I learned that a wall can become a gospel
when the newspapers lie.
A wall can become an archive
when the official files are burned,
when the generals call murder peace,
when the empire calls bloodshed stability,
when the poor are told to forget
for the sake of moving on.

But the wall does not move on.

The wall says: here.
The wall says: this happened.
The wall says: this child had a name.
This priest had hands.
This woman had laughter.
This union worker had a mother.
This martyr did not die in abstraction,
did not perish as an example,
did not vanish into a sermon illustration.
They were flesh.
They were breath.
They were somebody’s beloved.

And I have seen it elsewhere too.

Not only there, where memory was brushed onto concrete
beneath the long shadow of rifles and oligarchs,
but here,
in this empire’s marble reach,
in this capital of speeches and signatures,
in neighborhoods of D.C. where color rises up
against erasure,
where the dead look down from brick walls
and ask the living what exactly we are doing
with the testimony they left us.

I have walked those streets too,
where murals bloom like wounds that refuse to close,
where every face says both remember
and why again?

That is the ache of it.

Because a mural is beautiful,
but it is also an indictment.

A mural is what happens
when grief runs out of sanctioned places to go.
When cemeteries are too quiet,
when courtrooms are too compromised,
when history books are too polite,
when churches would rather canonize the dead
than stand beside the threatened living,
someone climbs a ladder with paint
and says:
You will not make us forget.

And yet even that holy act contains a heartbreak.

Because every new mural is also a confession
that we have failed again.

We say we honor the martyrs.
We paint them large.
We ring them with light.
We write their names in careful letters.
We tell their stories to our children.
We call them seeds.
We call them saints.
We call them witnesses.

But if we must keep making more walls,
if there is always another name,
another mother,
another child,
another prophet with blood on their shirt,
another journalist, another dreamer, another body,
then our memorials are not only songs of praise.
They are laments.
They are accusations.
They are unfinished prayers.

I do not want a world
where we become very skilled
at decorating the aftermath.

I do not want justice outsourced to artists
because legislators are cowards,
because police departments close ranks,
because borders harden,
because markets consume,
because nations baptize their violence
and then ask poets to clean up the silence.

I am grateful for the murals.
God, I am grateful for them.
For the ones who paint the saints with brown hands
and tired eyes.
For the ones who make a wall preach.
For the ones who turn an alley into a liturgy.
For the ones who refuse the second death,
the death of being forgotten.

But I am tired of needing them.

Tired of standing before another radiant face
and knowing radiance came at the price of a bullet.
Tired of admiring the colors
while knowing the color had to cover over grief
too large for speech.
Tired of telling the story again
because the engines that made the story
were never dismantled,
only rebranded, relocated, repainted.

That is the terrible genius of empire.
It learns to tolerate memorials
so long as the machinery of martyr-making stays intact.

Put the face on the wall.
Name the school after the slain.
Hold the vigil.
Light the candle.
Share the quote.
Then fund the weapons.
Protect the system.
Discredit the witness.
Fortify the border.
Ignore the neighborhood.
Silence the poor.
And when the next body falls,
commission another mural.

No.

There is something obscene
about praising the courage of the dead
while refusing the cost of solidarity with the living.

There is something blasphemous
about loving Romero on the wall
but not listening to prophets now.
About cherishing painted martyrs in San Salvador
and neglecting crucified people in Washington,
in detention centers,
in poor towns,
in Black and brown neighborhoods,
in places where the state still knows how to kneel
on a neck,
how to disappear a future,
how to call a human being illegal
before making them dead in spirit.

So yes,
I have walked among the murals.
And yes,
they have taught me.

They taught me that memory is resistance.
That color can be a form of defiance.
That beauty can tell the truth
when official language becomes a mask for murder.
They taught me the communion of saints
sometimes looks less like stained glass
and more like chipped paint on cinder block.
Less like cathedral windows
and more like public walls under open sky.

They taught me that the martyrs are still speaking.
Not only from heaven.
From brick.
From alley.
From barrio.
From the side of a building everyone passes
on the way to work,
on the way to school,
on the way to forgetting.

And they taught me to shudder.

Because sometimes, standing there,
I have had the strange and terrible thought:

One day they could make a mural of me.

Not because I seek glory.
Not because I imagine myself noble.
Not because I think suffering makes a person pure.
But because in a world like this,
where truth still threatens power,
where solidarity still has a price,
where loving the crucified too closely
can still get you crucified,
any one of us who dares enough
might end up as paint.

Made a mural of me.

Put me on a wall with the others.
Give me a background of sunburst gold,
or deep blue,
or the red of blood transfigured into witness.
Paint my face calmer than I ever was in life.
Smooth out my fear.
Make me look brave.

But if you do,
let the mural say I did not want this.

Let it say I wanted fewer murals,
not more.

Let it say I wanted children to know these names
without needing to inherit their wounds.
Let it say I wanted nations to repent
before artists had to remember for them.
Let it say I wanted churches
to become sanctuaries of the endangered
instead of galleries of the already slain.
Let it say I wanted the wall
to go blank someday,
not from amnesia,
but from justice.

That is my prayer now.

Not that we stop honoring the martyrs.
Never that.
Paint them.
Sing them.
Tell them.
Teach them.
Write them in the streets and on the doors
and in the marrow of the young.

But also:
stop making so many of them.

Let there come a day
when the painters have to find another subject.
When the ladders lean against walls
for festivals instead of funerals.
When color is used for delight
and not only for defiance.
When remembrance is no longer emergency labor.
When the living are protected enough
that martyrdom becomes rare,
and rare enough
that every new death shocks us again.

Until then,
the walls will keep preaching.

And I will keep listening
with gratitude and grief,
with reverence and anger,
with hope cracked open but not empty.

Because every mural is a promise
the dead make to the living:

We are still here.
We are watching what you do next.
Do not honor us
by becoming connoisseurs of tragedy.
Honor us
by ending the thing that killed us.

And until that day,
the paint will keep drying,
and the faces will keep multiplying,
and the walls will keep learning names
they should never have had to learn.

And I will stand before them,
heart broken open,
thinking:

this wall should be empty by now.

Excommunicate Me

Excommunicate me, then.
Ring the bell if you have one. Draw the line in ash. Nail the notice to the chapel door. Speak my name in the flat voice reserved for weather, death, and disappointment. Tell the saints to avert their eyes. Tell the children not to ask questions. Tell the old women in the kitchen to lower their voices when I pass. I have grown used to doors closing with the gentleness of those who think themselves righteous.

Excommunicate me for loving too widely, for asking where the missing ones went, for lingering too long at the edge of the map where the heretics, addicts, doubters, dissidents, and queer-eyed prophets make their fires at night. Excommunicate me for saying that Christ still wanders there, coat smelling of smoke, hands warm from other people’s wounds. Excommunicate me for suspecting that the kingdom keeps being born in places your committees have not approved.

Cast me out for refusing to confuse your fences with holiness.
Cast me out for noticing how often your purity is purchased with somebody else’s loneliness.
Cast me out for believing that a table is still a table even when the wrong people find bread there first.

I know how this works. First comes the sorrowful meeting. Then the careful language. Then the phrases dressed in prayer like soldiers dressed in hymnals. We say discernment when we mean fear. We say order when we mean control. We say peace when we mean silence from those already bruised. We say love while measuring who may enter it. We say truth with our arms folded.

Excommunicate me because I cannot keep pretending that the wound in the Body is healed by cutting off another limb.

I have seen too much of the outside to fear it now. I have seen the banished making soup for one another. I have seen the condemned share coats in winter. I have seen those denied the sacraments become sacraments for each other: bread in famine, oil in sickness, a hand on the shoulder in the long vestibule of grief. I have heard better theology whispered on back steps than shouted from polished pulpits. I have watched the Spirit climb out the stained-glass window and go where she is not expected.

Excommunicate me, and I will go down among the unclaimed.
I will kneel beside the ones your footnotes could not save.
I will keep company with the mothers whose prayers embarrassed you, the children whose questions outgrew your answers, the men who wept when they were told to be strong, the women who spoke and were called dangerous, the wanderers who could not make your narrow gate into a home.

And if you shut me out from your sanctuary, I will make a sanctuary of the road.
If you deny me your blessing, I will learn the blessing of crows at morning, of rain on rusted tin, of strangers who still know how to share fire.
If you call me lost, I will answer that some of us were never meant to be found by empires.

Do not threaten me with the outer dark.
I have met God there.

Not the tidy god of minutes and motions, not the well-behaved deity who always sides with the CEO, but the God who haunts the threshold, who leaves the ninety-nine to go where the crying is, who touches the unclean and is not diminished, who slips through locked doors and still carries wounds, who keeps raising what the pious have buried.

Excommunicate me for this: I no longer believe belonging is yours to ration.
I no longer believe grace requires your seal.
I no longer believe heaven trembles when your vote is taken.
The veil was torn without your permission, and it has never been properly mended.

So do it.
Write me out.
Strike my name from the roll.
Erase me from the minutes.
Tell yourselves the garden is safer now that one more wild thing has been removed.

But listen: roots work in secret. Seeds pass through the beaks of birds and are planted in their shit. Wind ignores decrees. What you cast out does not always die. Sometimes it takes hold beyond the wall and flowers in the rubble, and those passing by say, I did not know beauty could grow here.

Excommunicate me, then.
I will go with Christ among the cast out.
I will go where the lepers still ring their bells, where the scapegoats stagger into the wilderness, where the rejected stone waits in the dust.
And when at last you come looking for God, breathless with your censures, your keys jangling at your side, do not be surprised to find us already inside the feast, the doors flung wide, the music loud, the wounded laughing, and every empty place at the table set for one more.

Meine Mutter - starb am 13. August 2015 unfriedlich in ihrem Zimmer im Walnut Village Assisted Living in Anaheim in Kalifornien an Lungenfibrose. Das Zimmer war am 3. Juli 2012 geboren worden. Das Village war nicht eigentlich ein Dorf. Keine Walnußbäume. Nur Schnittblumen. Der Palliativpfleger ...

(ganzes Gedicht s. ALT-Text)

Victoria Chang (*1970): Obit, 2020, dt. von Ron Wikler in: Sinn und Form, 2026 #Prosagedicht #prosepoem #poetry #Lyrik
Foto: Titelseite "Sinn und Form"

Meine Mutter - starb am 13. August 2015 unfriedlich in ihrem Zimmer im Walnut Village Assisted Living in Anaheim in Kalifornien an Lungenfibrose. Das Zimmer war am 3. Juli 2012 geboren worden. Das Village war nicht eigentlich ein Dorf. Keine Walnußbäume. Nur Schnittblumen. Der Palliativpfleger ...

(ganzes Gedicht s. ALT-Text)

Victoria Chang (*1970): Obit, 2020, dt. von Ron Wikler in: Sinn und Form, 2026 #Prosagedicht #prosepoem #poetry #Lyrik
Foto: Titelseite "Sinn und Form"