A PRAYER NOT SPOKEN

by Jill Crainshaw

Words.

Matter.

In us.

God’s love
made skin and bones
muscle and marrow
hands and hearts
God’s words.
Matter.
In us.

No more speeches or spin doctors,
debates or diatribes—no--
God’s nouns and adjectives and verbs
made alive
welcoming
respecting
forgiving
loving
incarnating belonging
in us.

Words made matter,
planted in salvaged soil
reclaimed
restored
valued
savored and saving
hope
in us.

So be it.

Author’s note: So many words. Too many. This is what came to mind for me as I listened to all the talk at and about the National Prayer Breakfast. As a Christian clergy person, I longed at the end of a week of chaotic and contentious words in Washington for prayerful moments of reflection, even for expressions of concern for all that divides us as a nation. John’s Gospel speaks of Jesus as God’s Word made flesh. This week, I longed for fewer spoken words and more words made flesh in embodied actions of communal care that cross boundaries and borders that separate us from each other. I realize that such longings are idealistic. They dwell in sacred geographies of hope. For now, these longings are, for me, the prayer that was not spoken at this week’s prayer breakfast. 

Jill Crainshaw is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a liturgical theology professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

SHOCKFOX

by Mickey J. Corrigan




Flint-eyed  and bound
for ash on the edge
of bursting
into flame, that's
when you pull out
the mic and the camera
the global keyboard
and clickity clack share
your outrage journalism
in machinegun blasts

Never mind what all
the offense archaeologists
will dig up when
they dissect your diatribes
from the city crumble
bleak state disasters

Pay no mind
to the PC anthro-apologists
who'll scrape
the jackboot muck
off your commentary
after the bombs fall,
the mushroom cloud
passes overhead

You are still on target
your electronic pulpit hot
your right a kind of wrong
a viral spread
of abyss-mal charisma
peanut butter and bile
on the bread of our ears

our daily bread
we must take in
as we wait
for you
to explode.


Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan lives in South Florida and writes noir with a dark humor. Books have been released by publishers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Poetry chapbooks include The Art of Bars (Finishing Line Press, 2016) and Days' End (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2017). Project XX, a novel about a school shooting, was published in 2017 by Salt Publishing in the UK.