By Jane Barnes

For mc

***

your idea of God is very plaid Bermuda shorts
I think Michelangelo and da Vinci are the

dudes you report to and shit-faced it’s
very hard to go down in the quarry and pick

out the stone to roll away from the door
of your tomb you are a little slice of God

I am too God is the rain or the flesh or the
right shade of burnt ochre you’re too late

you been praying all this long time and
you even have a Jesus look going (tee

hee to you about that) and don’t
get me wrong I’m no Christian if anything

buddhist spirit means there are quicker
ways to do things than just hauling ass

you got a gift just let it drag you around
your brain is handy but not like just

splashing the paint and the pain all
around belief can pay for a second home

Jane Barnes has finished a poetry manuscript covering 25 years in 250 poems called “The Inbetween: Poems 1982-2007.” A short story of Jane’s, “too big to hug,” is carved on a granite pillar at Copley Square in Back Bay, Boston.

Related Articles

Imbalances

By Sara Collie I am 10 or 11, navigating some pre-teen cusp of selfhood when the question rises up, engulfs me, troubling that long sunstroked lunch outside the Cornish pub under the looming cliffs where I watch the waitress tuck her hair neatly behind her ears,...

read more

Voyeurism

By K. Olivia Overton Channel 62 at 2:00 a.m. features naked ladies and a man’s voice that guarantees the second DVD free sent in discreet packaging if you call now. Their shiny skin and soft cries made her tummy tickle like when she would rub her scraped palms against...

read more

Closing My Eyes

By Natalie Schriefer I remember not the paperwork mounding on my desk, staff stretched thin with the secretary away, but the background on my computer—the smile of my sapphic fictional crush, a screenshot from a movie, which I saw whenever I closed out a window, a...

read more