Vexed

      Copyright © 2015 Elizabeth Poreba. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-1888-7

      EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-1889-4

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      “Village Church,” “One-Sided Dialogue Concerning the Soul” and “Jonah” appeared previously in Commonweal.

      “The Career of That Enigmatic Man” appeared in Spiritofstbarts (online)

      “Iris” and “St. Kateri” appeared in First Literary Review East (online)

      Scriptural passages from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

      Cover Image: John Mann, Untitled, from Drift, 2013

      Members of the O’Clock Poets—Maura Candela, Guillermo Castro, John Couturier, Ron Drummond, Katie Johntz, Amy Lemmon, Katrinka Moore, Martie Palar, Joan Poole, Sarah Stern—read and pondered most of these poems with me, and I can never thank them enough.

      for all the saints, known and unknown

      Vexed

      Why not speak of it

      made of rays

      A large presence

      that does not press upon us

      Why not people the blue

      populate the waste space

      Set the table

      arrange the cup and plate

      Mark the calendar

      to the end of time

      Smooth back

      the title page

      Address this vexed topic

      neither wave

      Nor particle

      Why, my soul, are you downcast?

      It’s living with that old lady, isn’t it? How she persists in the face of nobody’s interest.

      How she lavishes Pond’s Classic Caring Crème in grudging 3AM light, electricity hauled from the dark to service her futile salvage effort.

      How she creeps into the kitchen for coffee draped in a 30-year old robe, the good one reserved for the inevitable hospital visit (as she would explain if anyone asked).

      How she is out the door in her sensible shoes, immune to the street’s indifference, persistent in her flaws despite being trained to please.

      How as a smoother version of herself, better packaged, she was a pleasant woman, but she is no longer pleasing.

      In fact she can be very unpleasant, though combed, usually, and clean, doddering along in the general rush.

      How she can’t even knit worth beans or imagine anyone else’s misery.

      Soul, how you groan, poor soul, in such company.

      Mystery

      The man they sent to campus once a week to parlay with those of us interested used this word often, soothing our perplexities with its soft three beats. I took it to mean unknown, but lately it seems to mean, continuously being revealed, like the deer that fill the woods in these parts.

      One waited to cross the road the other day, cautious and pedestrian. Driving by, I glimpsed the glazed pools of its eyes opened wide and in the rearview mirror saw the grace of its gait, head unmoving as legs lightly plied a sure scatter of hoofs on asphalt to the other side, where it resumed its disappearance.

      Cryptic

      Fascination of shapes

      that signal

      what might come.

      A hawk on a high limb,

      chest an urn

      waiting empty in the sun.

      A key’s cryptic edge

      that exerts

      owner’s privilege.

      To the searching eye,

      any thing

      can suggest an opening.

      Abraham and Sarah Get the Unlikely News

      Her husband sits in the center of the painting,

      lifting a languid finger toward her.

      She leans out of the house

      as if to restrain herself from escape.

      That’s a gnarled hand, clutching the doorframe.

      It’s the moment after her laugh.

      After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?

      God chooses to ask Abraham about this:

      Why did she laugh?

      but she’s the one to answer:

      I laughed not.

      To which the creator of the universe responds with a careless

      Nay but thou didst laugh

      or Yes you did. You laughed.

      depending on the translation.

      But no matter; she lies and it doesn’t make a difference because then

      the men rose up from thence.

      It was time to wrangle over Sodom and Gomorrah

      and the issue of Lot’s wife.

      Of the Career of That Enigmatic Man,

      nothing much to remark.

      The case is closed.

      It’s a tale unknown,

      singular as a forest

      flower, unsown,

      part of no garden,

      of a color vague

      as the maples’ pink

      spring haze.

      Whatever transpired left

      with his last breath,

      and though other tongues

      may take it up,

      for all I know,