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By Emma McCoy
(Twitter: @poetrybyemma)
—Seriously dangerous religion—
for Ian Provan
When he was studying theology, my dad inadvertently
showed me how to befriend a professor:
build him a deck while your children eat pancakes
inside.
Take delight in his wit, in the accent so thick
you’d need a crowbar to stir it.
Go fishing, read his book, graduate
and wait as he watches your children graduate in turn.
I have many memories of him but my favorite is this:
we are snowed in, all of us.
We go to the bottom
of our steep hill to assess that tricky turn,
to see if he can make his flight, or stay another night.
There are already two cars in the ditch,
writing etched in snow and swerving tire treads
showing black against the whit
He is a prophet of the old ages, watching that third
car pull slowly forward.
I often wonder what the driver
was thinking-- seeing the old man with the eyes of God
shake his head and point at the writing on the road,
and how he bore witness to a third casualty
of friction and gravity.
—Heretical—
“Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn’t interest me much.
I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave.”
-- The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
Communion given
in a solid gold cup
inlaid with the blood jewels
of holy wars
Christ probably laughed
at that
standing ankle deep in cow shit
in the barn he was born in
—At A Dinner Party, With A Ouija Board—
He watches the board shift
on the coffee table
to the coos of delight
of the brightly dressed women
and the disguised gasps
of the richly suited men.
Smoke lingers in the air
as they ask, “Will there be war?”
The papers say no,
the president says no,
and in the clink of slim bracelets
and candy colored nails
the board says no too.
He catches the eye of a woman
slinking toward the exit
with the beginnings of worry
on her smoky eyelids
and raises his glass sardonically.
About the Author:
Emma McCoy is a poet and essayist with love for the old stories. She is the assistant editor of Whale Road Review, co-editor of Driftwood, and poetry reader for the Minison Project. She is the author of “In Case I Live Forever” (2022), and she has poems published in places like Flat Ink, Paddler Press, and Jupiter Review.
Catch her on Twitter: @poetrybyemma
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