"Free Bible in Your Own Language"
       

Call me doubting Tom, but have you heard
my language? How I pepper the day
with oh shits of running late and road kill?

And does a book on your table filter fables
through nineteen-eighties pop lines? Shout, shout,
let it all out. What about shunyata,

that wide bowl of a Buddhist word—emptiness—
splattered flat on a blank page like a smacked fly?
In my bible, several vacant pages follow.

Let's shut one. Like a musical greeting card,
open it again. Any monks chanting
muddled nirvana? How about a bongo

and a flute, a hermaphrodite rapping
the precise number of steps it took
to reach now? Only text: Adam's rib and how

Eve was turned from it. This is wrong.
In my language, God takes two of his own,
blows bone-dust across a field

like seeds, plants trees. Roots grow into legs.
Upon what, you ask, is the book
written? Give me some space,

a quiet walk in the grass unburdened
by your kiosk of Korean, Finnish, French....
With my footprints bending the blades,

I'll write a faint psalm of unknowing,
knowing the sun will erase it, will call
it back into straight, green, speechless strands.

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Copyright © 2012 Heather Kirn Lanier All rights reserved
from The Story You Tell Yourself
Kent State University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission