Vern Fein

POETRY

Theology

You say there is no Heaven.
Fly with me now across the world
to a breast in one country,
as long as the people are starving.
It does not matter where.
A desiccated breast. Sere.
Clinging, an infant, boy or girl?
Doesn’t matter.
Sucking scarce milk from a drying teat,
soon to die, like its siblings, like its mother.
Doesn’t matter.
You say there is no Heaven.
You say there is no justice.
The universe just happened by accident,
just appeared, exploding into beautiful
us.

Outcomes just came out.

Fly back with me back to our country,
to a crib in the suburbs.
See my niece, dressed in pink,
a silver spoon in her mouth.
She will live to a ripe old age,
have a beau, have a baby,
maybe more for the nanny.
Boys or girls, doesn’t matter.
A plump, full breast or Silk milk.
You say: Too bad, too bad! It’s just too bad!
That’s just the way the cookie crumbles in the milk.
I don’t think about the future, Heaven.
Doesn’t matter. I can’t think about those other babies.

Hand me a fresh diaper. Hurry, I have to go.
Meeting my hubby at the restaurant.
Hurry.

“Theology,” read by Vern Fein.

Saturday (An Easter Poem)

He is dead now.
He was so alive,
Buried.
We are scattered,
Huddled in fear
In various haunts.

Will we ever be fishermen again?
Peacefully plying our nets.

Didn’t we see the miracles?
Drinking the hilarious wine at Cana.

Didn’t we see the healings?
So many unblinded.
The centurion’s daughter dancing.

Didn’t we see the demons
Come screaming out?
The startled eyes of pigs and peasants.

Didn’t He forgive our sins?
Stones refusing to kill a fallen woman.
The tax collector scrambling down the sycamore.

When will they hunt and kill us?
Remember the agony of the tree.

We remember the days of Glory.
His face shining for days off the mountain.

Will we always remember,
The sound of His voice?
You feed them! I AM…I AM…

That look He gave us
When we slept in the Garden.

Oh God, what will tomorrow be like?
What will tomorrow bring…

A retired special education teacher, Vern Fein has published over two hundred poems on over eighty sites, a few being: *82 Review, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven’s Review, Poesis, Monterey Poetry Review, and Corvus Review. Recently his first book of poetry—I WAS YOUNG AND THOUGHT IT WOULD CHANGE—was published by Cyberwit Press.

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Photo credit: “This Little Piggy When To Market” by Rowan Simpson, Flickr.com.