Poetry

Witold Krassowski

By

Jill Crainshaw

parousia

mwa, mwa-mwa, mwa, mwa…

grown-up Lucys and Charlie Browns

sit at too-tight desks waiting

for recess

a new baseball season

the great pumpkin

air a-twitter with eschatological hope

blah-blah, blah-blah, blah

he’s here

substitute teacher

very smart

billion dollar credentials in hand

knows a lot and speaks simply

on behalf of simple people

a man of the people accent

none of the people understand

not really

but the people simply aren’t listening

are they

bleh, bleh-bleh, bleh

Putin and Pence and

Ivanka Trump retail pumps

headline newsfeeds that barely

mutter the mattering of black lives

or any other everyday vulnerable lives

words are falling I’m not hearing—

even my facebook feed is starting to snow

mwa, mwa-mwa, mwa, mwa

mute the Trumpet

poetic parousia pounds the streets

in search of ears that have a dream

hope matters

despite warning signs

planted like a flag

in this uncharted land

yes even here

under a mournful moon

where footprints last

a long time because

neither moth

nor rust

consume

Jill Crainshaw

Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity and a Presbyterian minister (PCUSA). Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, Star 82 Reveiw, and Panoplyzine. She is frequent contributor to the Patheos blog, Unfundamentalist Christians. She blogs at drdeacondog.wordpress.com.