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Column 662

God, God

Intro by Ted Kooser
11.26.2017

Many of us at some hour have strug­gled with orga­nized reli­gion, maybe all night, like Jacob wrestling the angel. Here’s a fine poem by Fle­da Brown, from her book No Need of Sym­pa­thy. She is the for­mer poet lau­re­ate of Delaware and now lives in Michi­gan. Her new and select­ed poems, The Woods Are On Fire, is forth­com­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka Press.

God, God

We dressed for church.  I had a white hat
and white gloves when I was fifteen, no joke.
You had to do that to show God you cared.
 
God's eyes were stained glass, and his voice
was pipe organ. He was immortal, invisible,
while my panty-hose itched and my atheist
 
father chewed his tongue and threatened to run
out the door but didn't for my mother's sake,
and she swallowed her fate, this marriage,
 
like a communion cracker, and my brain-
damaged brother lurched around the church
nursery, and my sweeter sister watched me
 
with huge brown eyes to see what I'd do next.
My God, why did I turn my eyes upward when
we were all there, then, in the flesh? I am so
 
sorry about God, sorry we fastened that word
to the sky. God's not even legal in Hebrew.
If you get the vowel caught between the two
 
consonants of your lips, it can carry you
dangerously up like a balloon over what you'd
give anything to be in the middle of, now.
 

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2016 by Fleda Brown, “God, God,” from No Need of Sympathy, (BOA Editions, 2013). Poem reprinted by permission of Fleda Brown and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.