The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Low PassionsWords by Anders Carlson-Wee Image by Gretchen Gales @GGalesQuailBell QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: This was previously published in Ninth Letter. The Lord came down because God wasn’t enough. He lies on sodden cardboard behind bushes in the churchyard. Wrapped in faded red. A sleeping bag he found or traded for. Dark stains like clouds before a downpour. The stone wall beside him rising, always rising, the edges of stone going blunt where the choirboy climbs. He opens his mouth, but nothing goes in and nothing comes out. Like the sideshow man who long ago lost
his right testicle to the crossbar of a Huffy. He peddles the leftover pain. The stitches clipped a week later by his father, the fiberglass bathtub running with color, the puffy new scar, the crooked look of the pitted half-sack. He tells me you only need one nut, and I want to believe him. I want to believe he can still get it up. I want to believe he has daughters, sons, a grandchild on the way, a wife at home in a blue apron baking. But why this day-old bread from the dumpster, this stash of hollow bottles in the buckthorn, this wrinkled can of Pabst? The Lord came down because God wasn’t enough. Because the childless man draws the bathwater and cries. Because the choirboy never sings as he climbs. Because the bread has all molded and the mouths are all open. Open to the clotting air. Homeless, anything helps. Anything. Anything you can spare. God bless you, God bless you, God bless. God, Lord God, God God, good God, good Lord very good God. CommentsComments are closed.
|