Sample Poems

Journal of feminist studies in religion (fall 2023)

Yeshua Sits Cross-Legged with His Classmates and Listens to Artemis's Parable of the Soccer Match

At the soccer match

players kick the ball out of bounds

into the stands

The ball floats at you

It is big and soft. There is no way

you will not catch it

No one else in the stands moves to clutch it

They relax

That it is meant for you

is obvious

Just sit there

Who you are does not rise

and clamor for foul balls

that fly into the throng

The game is where you sit

and watch God’s big, rounded softness

waft into your lap

Memorial to the Canaanite Woman

A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to Jesus, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." -- Matthew 15:22 (NIV)

In the city, obelisks

reaching toward heaven celebrate the

nation’s founder.

A domed cathedral

praises the man

whose acts of diplomacy

in war

we rehearse on the designated

holiday.

A building with seven columns

at the end of a garden

resembling a football field

protects the ideas of he

who championed the right side

of brotherhood.

There are no plaques for the Canaanite Woman.

Few know they pass

her house on a street off the thruway

to the obelisk, the cathedral,

the garden of columns.

Was it a brick home? This street?

The thruway takes us past.

Every time you love

beyond love’s barbed wire

fence and no one knows,

not even you yet

in your unspeakable strain,

you visit the invisible structure.

You honor her.

Tomorrow aNd Tomorrow (ISSUE 3, 2022)

Yeshua Rereads the Iliad's Final Line. It Speaks to Something Deep Inside Him

"And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses."

-- Homer, the Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles

Only young Hector,

irreplaceable prince,

visits the horses

In their eyes’ sharp unreason,

he sees his own. He sees God’s still,

dark pool

Hector cups oats

Apple slices. Cubes of sugar

Approaches sidelong the muzzle,

holds dates to the mouth

that will never thank him,

so hungrily the lips devour sweets

Door is a jar (Spring 2021)

I Like Eternity

I like eternity

like I like lions at the zoo

In cages

Behind glass

Let someone else feed them

I think their manes are beautiful,

so, too, is the way their bodies are so relaxed

lying in the exhibit like they own the place

But they don’t own it. People do. That’s how I like

eternity

I gaze into the glass, call everything it shows me

beautiful,

but it’s disturbing. It’s not quite right, the magnitude of

lion majesty

boxed in a cage. And it’s a little scary how peaceful their

lethal paws are

I get to decide how long I stay

I get to decide when I look away and go home

I like that the zoo closes at 6 p.m. and reopens

at a reasonable mid-morning hour

SOUL-LIT: A JOURNAL OF SPIRITUAL POETRY (SUMMER 2020)

Why Jesus Changed Water to Wine

At the wedding, the groom’s brother
sat beside me on the stone wall

bordering the garden where everyone

danced and drank

The music held us apart from them like a soft net
He was drunk and moving his body close to mine

His knee touched mine
He moved the insides of his eyes
closer to the insides of my eyes

He said, The wine is nearly out
One more sip pooled in his glass
His eyes mouthed

Kiss me

I got up, found the barrels, and turned water to wine
not for the bride and groom

but for the changes wine works in a man
to ache so tenderly, so openly
for a kiss in a garden

The Podcast Host Asks Jesus to Explain Again Because Listeners Want to Understand

I can use a wrench
and fix doors just fine

But the tools that come naturally
to me are introspection
and patience with discomfort

I noticed cracked souls
more than creaking doors

I was ashamed of that skill for a long time
because I didn’t think it was one

I looked so deeply into everyone
I fixated on their fundamental innocence

I knew I was supposed to be mad at injustices like everybody else
but I wasn’t, because everyone—violated and violator—was innocent

We are The Same from eternity’s perspective
Eternity is the Great Equalizer

So I decided to function at the level of eternity

When you see everyone as God underneath fear’s gunk
you can’t take sides. Eternity has no left and right

When they come to kill you, as they did for me,
you see eternity, not men with weapons

I could not fear eternity
coming for eternity

It would’ve been like fish
fearful of water

Mary’s Biographer Reflects on Three Ceramic Shoes

In Mary’s home, beside her bed,
three little ceramic, decorative shoes line her windowsill

I was not going to ask her about them,
assuming they represent her three children: Jesus, James, and Esther

But they don’t

She said they stand for her siblings:
Rose, herself, and Noah, who died as an infant

When Mary rises every morning, the first thing she sees
is this trio, with one member always missing

But no, she corrected me, missing is wrong too

We all lead full lives

Jesus’s Parable of the Windy Day

The street artist watched the wind take his drawing

It flapped across the ground and past street vendors
The artist did not yell to passersby to catch it

Nonetheless, a couple of men tried, even climbing up a fire escape to follow it
blowing upward past the second floor

That is the self blowing away, Jesus said
People tried to rescue mine by writing the Gospels

Luke and John climbed that fire escape
They think I lost something precious

I was the artist who stood there and watched it blow away

DARK MOON LILITH: A Journal of the WONDROUS STRANGE (2021)

The Canaanite Woman Heals Jesus

A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to Jesus, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.” —Matthew 15:22

The story is that I, Jesus, healed her child.

But I didn’t. The Canaanite woman healed me.

She showed me how far away from God I was.

I thought I lived in God’s palace. But I hadn’t

yet even reached His front door.

I would only touch the afflicted, then leave.

I wouldn’t live with them.

I didn’t make them breakfast.

I didn’t place pencils back into their hands,

teaching them to write after they stabbed me with them.

I didn’t clean up shattered glass

of the painting I had devoted months to making,

which took only one second for the afflicted to knock

to the floor and slash with a knife.

I didn’t cook them dinner an hour later.

I didn’t sit with the afflicted overnight in the hospital

after they yelled “Fuck you!” to me while tearing the seven books

I had written. I didn’t meet with endless series of doctors through

endless emergency-room nights, then drive to different pharmacies

for the afflicted’s medication while they slept.

I never secured the afflicted’s seat belt, drove them home,

and tucked them into bed.

I never signed them up for swimming lessons.

I asked the Canaanite woman to join my ministry

and teach with me, because she knew

The Mystery, the space beyond

the brick limits of love.

She said no.

She had to raise her daughter,

rewrite her books, and write new ones.

Noah

I decided to rise above the deluge,

the maelstrom of Right, the rip tide of Wrong

and work on living in Oneness,

one big arc of God

I loaded my dualistic thinking—

man and woman, lamb and lion, shame and fame—

into one spot where I could look at it long and hard—

40 days and 40 nights

The animals on board were my self

My vocation: to tame that yapping and howling

so it wasn’t pushing and pulling

me around all day

The moment I quieted the self’s snarls and bites

the rain stopped

A rainbow appeared

I felt a little bump

I barely noticed I had reached a mountain top

Poseidon Watches Jonah Panic

From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God. He said: “In my distress I called to the Lord . . . From the depths of the grave I called for help.” — Jonah 2:1-2

You all wait until you’ve abandoned God

to come to my onyx kingdom

You’re shocked by darkness,

the warmth underneath the cold,

the pressure you fear will crush you

but in fact buoys you like an octopus

Your arms become strange

You look at them

It’s called hitting rock bottom

I’m rock bottom all the time

And I never hit

Not once have I ever hit

I float, waft, splash

You’re gasping

so I give you a whale,

a whole room to yourself down here

to indulge your need for great walls

to keep the deep out even in the deep

You’ll leave my ebony ballrooms

when you think you know immensity

But you’ll be back

You’ll forget again

that God isn’t

all about light and air

You’ll be shocked

again

that heaven is dark

Hello

Your eyes adjust more quickly this time

and see me reclining

with my feet up or dancing all night

under the disco ball

of bioluminous fins

Welcome back. Come and dance

for one song

before you climb into your whale

walls again

Yeshua Explains How Getting PrEP as a Young Adult Influenced His Ministry

I had run out of my medication

Apothecaries in Nazareth didn’t carry the taboo pills

My supplier wouldn’t have more for another month

until he went to Jerusalem

A quiet woman at temple

pulled me aside after service,

told me to visit a Sister Susan

who would be expecting me

at 10:45 p.m. in the old temple’s basement

The woman’s eyes sparkled. Then

she left to serve cookies in the lobby

I arrived at the old temple,

walked down a dank staircase, passed

men with crutches who hadn’t changed shirts

in a lifetime. I asked a woman bandaging a man’s foot

I wouldn’t look at

if she knew where I could find Sister Susan

She pointed with her chin. Last door on the left

I paused in the open doorframe

Sister Susan turned around,

put the bottle on the desk

and said, I’m just going to leave this here

She continued her conversation

with a woman holding a clipboard and taking notes

I took the bottle

A thin man whose eyes were dead

or on eternity watched me

or nothing as I climbed the stairs

and left

It dawned on me that the woman serving cookies

was Sister Susan’s disciple

Or Sister Susan was hers

And the woman with the clipboard

was writing their gospel

TIFERET Journal (AUTUMN/WInter 2020)

Jesus Gives the Keynote Address at the National Speech & Debate Tournament

Growing up, boys had to speak up to win God.

Fathers wanted sons in Debate League.

I joined and practiced announcing

loopholes in other’s Talmud arguments.

Gotcha for God.

But I was not selected for the Young Debaters.

I was more listener.

I stood back

and heard

a whisper of suffering

in the farthest corners of the winning arguments.

Only later did I recognize that listening is

not disappearance but emergence.

Pausing to listen loosens a mist

that obscures golden domes from ramshackle roofs.

Now everyone can come out

about cracks and water damage.

People remember me as a healer of leprosy, demons, and even death.

Really I just listened,

patient with the odor of unwashed hair

and with eyes watering from Hell’s heat.

This was the miracle:

that leprosy, demons, and death were worth listening to

and not defeating.

After the pause (Fall 2020)

Jesus and Gilgamesh

Jesus Takes Mental Notes While Listening to a Storyteller Recite The Epic of Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh follows every emotion

to its limit

He reaches the edge of the world

and made his way back

His hands drop swords

and rebuild Eanna Temple

Resurrection is to decide

to think like God

What was ruined

wasn’t

Jesus Wonders if He’d Consider Gilgamesh a Messiah

The Messiah could be anyone willing

to make their life’s work

a change of perspective,

the decision to climb stairs

to the temple of the mind

and separate—as a livelihood—

fear

from God

The Storyteller Concludes. Jesus Contemplates

Gilgamesh at last arrived where he began

He returns to his city,

walks its markets and courtyards

His suffering—mountain trek

and ocean storm; love leashed, then not

—evaporates

The story is not to have a story

Beginning and ending

the same place

After the Story, Jesus Walks Through the City Gardens

Gilgamesh falls in love like God does,

with everyone

Questions of preference

play no part in loving

Gilgamesh restores plazas and groves

for those whom he will never know,

criminals and victims alike

He rebuilds Eanna Temple

as a resurrection of innocence upon the highest hill

Each time we see another’s innocence

we add weight to the grooved stone steps

to the temple

*This poem series dialogues with Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Gilgamesh (Simon & Schuster, 2004). Italicized language, for instance, comes from Stephen’s translation.

Benjamin Bagocius, Ph.D.

Poet. Professor. Writing facilitator.

Sample poems