Poems

Altar 

Some middle-aged woman painted the room

dark purple, placed journals and pens, incense fumes,

white candles, cassette tapes, every kind of crucifix

smart enough to bear a price tag, and an old recliner

she had been trying to get rid of for going on a decade—

If only God were a door or a summer beach or a wise animal,

a cottage we could enter, wipe our feet, take off our clothes,

smell pomegranates, drink tea with lemons floating on the ice

from God who is always eerily quiet like a bourgeois fantasy

     what’s important is filling the time slots

     a journal entry—God enter me now

Paint the inside of my womb dark purple

write your most thrilling will on my fibula

across the gentleness of my bones

erase and batter all the pages of my words

grind them into paste and infect my mind with

a single truth         one thing I should do

one small notice of grace

send me away with fire and threatening voice

and level the ground where my steps corrupted your holy presence

tell me there is no longer a need to stay in this place,

that I am fully created without mistake

that you heard me once and for all

that I must never come back again.

–by Kerri Vinson Snell

*Altar was published in 2013 by Burnside Writers (no longer online).

http://burnsidewriters.com/2013/02/24/altar/

World Without Grace

http://burnsidewriters.com/2013/03/30/world-without-grace/

Evangelism 101

http://burnsidewriters.com/2013/04/21/evangelism-101/

Church

http://burnsidewriters.com/2013/05/04/church/

Flock

http://burnsidewriters.com/2013/06/02/flock/