"Sleep"

by Wesley McNair, from Fire.
© David R. Godine. Reprinted with permission by National Public Radio (NPR)


The young dog would like to know
why we sit so long in one place
intent on a box that makes the same
noises and has no smell whatever.
Get out! Get out! we tell him
when he asks us by licking the
back of our hand, which has small hairs,
almost like his. Other times he finds us
motionless with papers in our lap,
or at a desk looking into a humming
square of light. Soon the dog understands
we are not looking, exactly, but sleeping
with our eyes open, then goes to sleep
himself. Is it us he cries out to,
moving his legs somewhere beyond
the rooms where we spend our lives?
We don't think to ask, upset
as we are in the end with the dog,
who has begun throwing the old,
shabby coat of himself down on every
floor or rug in the apartment, sleep,
we say, all that damn dog does is sleep.

"The Angel's Retirement Speech"
by Annie Farnsworth, from Bodies of Water, Bodies of Light.
Reprinted with permission by "The Writer's Almanac", National Public Radio (NPR)


My advice to those of you
just starting out: don't expect too much,
or to make a big splash.
They're all so jaded now, what with all
this technology. Not like the old days,
when all you had to do
was throw your voice on the wind,
cry tears through a statue, maybe just appear
in times of great stress, looking your most
diaphanous

No, now they've got
their own miracles, like cell phones
and videos - who needs a visitation
when they've got their own apparitions
appearing and disappearing, all night
on Extended Basic Cable?
With advances like that,
a voice from heaven is not all that impressive,
nor the sight of winged creatures hovering
in a golden shaft of light.

I guess I would say
just stick to the basics, the stuff
that always works. Like birthing babies,
and healing the folks the doctors thought hopeless.
Maybe pull the stalled car off the train tracks
at the very last second. When things look grim
give 'em the old "Jesus' face in a potato chip," or
maybe a squirrel's nest that becomes, at dusk,
the spitting image of St. Francis in profile.
It might sometimes seem
like a thankless job but when you
do it right, just watch them pack up
for a road trip pilgrimage
with their picnic baskets and instamatics.
Watch their eyes widened in innocence again,
to see the Mary Magdalene in a cloud formation,
or the Enquirer's MOSES ZUCCHINI.

August 17, 2005

Antigay leader condemns antigay preacher

Gay-hating Kansas preacher Fred Phelps's latest antics--picketing at the funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq--have even some of the staunchest antigay activists in the United States denouncing him. Last week Phelps and members of his Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to picket the funeral of marine gunnery sergeant Terry Ball in East Peoria, Ill. The Phelps clan has been demonstrating at military funerals for a month, claiming that deaths in Iraq are God's retribution for America's tolerance of homosexuality.

After Phelps was an apparent no-show at Ball's funeral, the antigay Illinois Family Institute took the opportunity to blast the Topeka-based preacher as an "opportunist" preaching a "false Gospel." Institute director Peter LaBarbera said in a statement that Phelps's message "fuels societal bigotry" against "pro-family" groups like his. LaBarbera even noted that Phelps makes such an "easy target" for the media to "paint any opposition to 'gay rights' as hateful," that he has "sometimes wondered if Phelps and his lawyerly clan are 'gay plants.'"

(Sirius/OutQ)