Jess Wilson, Naeco Studio

The Streetlight Was Impersonating the Moon But I Started Praying and Forgot I Was on Mushrooms

My gran brought me to church as a youngster

I queried how she understood the Latin tonguester

Rambling at the top of the isle

Full of boast and beguile

I got a side-eye and notable snicker

For weaving such juvenile wicker

Though I don’t think she herself recited a lick

Of that man’s bewildering politic

Confused, my head drifted like a river basin

I, the daughter of an open-minded Mason

Who raised me to think of heaven and hell

As loose ideas, myth and quell

I felt most spiritual walking out of that place

Into the beaming sunlight’s unblemished embrace

My gran squinted her eyes, quickened her pace

All the empirical hallow she mistakenly erased

I think heaven is the acceptance

That you’re already in a most celestial place

Full of mercy, murder and chaotic grace

All wound up, indefinitely in space

And there is no book more true than another

Only more helpful, legible, or rediscovered

In this age of question-mark deficit

Absolutists requiring no requisite

Seven-year-old little me

Wanted desperately to understand, to agree

But I couldn’t make out the words

That promised me safety among the herds

I grew up to be all the church aims to repress

A unabashed woman with nothing to confess,

Who dances and laughs and is unafraid

Refusing to let the foreboding abrade