Today’s choice
Previous poems
Karina Jutzi
Lot’s Wife
I think today of the boy in choir class
who closed his eyes when we sang
about Jesus. Who swayed, as if the Lord
himself was in the room.
I sat in the back row and braided
my girlfriend’s hair. Men are allowed
to worship each other. To bow down
at the feet of fellow men. But not to touch them.
They stand shoulder to shoulder,
eyes forward, staring at the same thing.
Women, on the other hand,
must also save their worship for men,
but their touches can go wherever they
damn well want to put their fingers.
The boy told me the story of
Lot’s nameless wife.
Who turned into a pillar of salt,
because she was disobedient.
Why not Ketchup, I said
Why not butter?
But I was missing the point,
which was: These are the rules of men,
follow them.
Karina Jutzi is a multi-genre writer whose work meets at the intersection of art and spirituality. Her poetry, plays, essays, and comedy writing have been featured in various literary magazines and publications. The main themes in her work are death, birth, and anything that peers into the void. She currently lives on a small farm in Vermont with her husband and young children.
Fatihah Quadri Eniola
There is an album of all the men
your mother have loved. It sits every
night in the deep silence of the
basement.
Nathan Evans
If they ask where I am, tell them: I am
wintering. I have secreted small acorns
of sadness in crevices of gnarled limbs
and shall be savouring their bitternesses
on the back of my tongue until the days
lengthen.
Jim Ferguson
we can travel anywhere
she winks, but let’s rest here
in amongst these words
a moment can take a while
Gabrielle Meadows
I am tearing the peel from an orange gently and somewhere
Far away a tree falls in a forest and we
don’t hear it but the ground does and the birds do
Hongwei Bao
Every five minutes it does its job,
hoovers every inch of her memory,
declutters all pains and sorrows.
Gary Day
And once the father frowned
As the boy struggled to fasten
The drawbridge on his fort.
‘He’ll never be any good
With his hands’ he declared,
As if the boy wasn’t there.
Royal Rhodes
Perhaps the friends of Lazarus, who died
and slipped his shroud, on seeing him might swoon
or rush to hear the tales of that beyond
they hoped and feared to face.
Dmitry Blizniuk for World Poetry Day
God in his worn, greasy jeans like a car mechanic
is lighting a new life from an old one.
Jeff Skinner
It takes ages. Tell me what it is you’re after
she says, when finally I get through.