Again I Am Born Again
Lord I have eaten and I think I won't
anymore eat / Animals
many times my weight / In animals
enough that were they resurrected and combined
Like the heroic robot in that cartoon I somehow always missed
And always looked forward to as a child
Lord they would be an animal / Finally too big to kill
Except by You who would
Shatter the sky and hurl the burning blue whale-sized shards down to do it
Lord even though You wouldn't have to break the sky to do it
And I accept I need to be reminded
I can't escape responsibility
for being the kind of creature that requires signs Lord from You
Merely by now refusing to participate
in the killing of some of the sometimes instruments through which Your signs / Pass
as they pass through every creature Lord and every object You I know
Killing the animal too big to kill would be a sign
And I accept I can't escape being grateful for Your signs
Being the kind of creature
that requires Your signs / Because You Lord have made me wondrous
Beginning with my always I imagine it to be
an ugly mush but really it's
I think I've read / Harder than that
brain and the thinking it might someday do
Because Lord I might someday think
Until that day and after I require signs / Lord and I can't escape
being grateful for Your signs
Because my body not my brain responds to them and You I know
Killing the animal too big to kill would be a sign
Lord as I took it for a sign
When fifteen years ago I prayed to be convinced
and drove to the monastery in Mount Angel and
The two tall firs
across from each other on either side of the narrow road to the monastery
Were struck by lightning
rare Oregon lightning on a barely misting afternoon
And fell across the road and Lord I couldn't leave
I took it for a sign and I believed
And that was when the moment when I understand the language now
The moment I was born again
The moment I believed I
Had seen God kill for me
Lord was the moment I became a human being
As You I know
killing the animal too big to kill would be a sign
Mary of Bethany Massages His Feet with Perfume Worth What a Worker Makes in a Year
I would have Lord as Judas did wondered and maybe if
I had been brave as Judas was
I might have said / Something about it why the
Perfume Mary massaged Your feet with wasn't / Instead
sold and the money given to the poor
A few years back I worked Lord in a factory making
parts for truck / Engines I think I wasn't sure then and I'm not sure now
I didn't mind the work except the standing hurt my feet
It got so bad eventually I had to quit
I was a temp anyway and I didn't care what the boss thought / I didn't
know who the boss was but
I didn't want to disappoint the agency
still / Eventually it got so bad I had to quit
But at the last station I worked for the first time I got to sit
Nobody told me Lord I could
Nobody told me Lord I couldn't I just grabbed a stool and sat
Like anything I made there Lord I couldn't tell You now what
The name of the thing I made there was
But sparks flew from the machine and burned my forearms
past my gloves / And Lord I didn't mind the sparks I got to sit
I got to sit Lord at that station for I think
a good ten minutes / Before a worker I had never met
Threw her gloves down and walked from her
Station across the floor / To tell me not to sit on my ass anymore
And then she walked off somewhere disappeared in the pallet stacks
I hadn't said anything back / Or honestly I might have said Okay
Not drawn out quick and scared
She was the only woman I ever saw
close to my age on the floor
After she disappeared / A man who worked at her station at
her table slithered over asked me / What she had said
and said she was a bitch and told me not to worry
But after that I didn't sit
That was the day I quit / I tell You now I know it Lord it love is truly is
Stronger than hate
Only for those who can afford it
On the First Day of the Last Week of His Life Jesus Overturns the Tables of the Money-Changers
For John Gallaher
I wrote to a friend yesterday and told him my new poems were
About or I was trying to say
Something about money to God
I think and I don't understand it why I think it Lord You don't
Understand money
but of course You do / And maybe even
Lord if You were You You on Earth used money maybe You
Didn't just overturn the tables of the money-changers
Maybe You sometimes ached to not
Lord have enough for even a few figs / Maybe You hated figs and always had or always the
Conditioned always of Your time here
hated figs / And maybe figs were usually
The cheapest food available and still You sometimes didn't have enough
Maybe You suffered in Your body first the suffering of in Your body Lord
Inhabiting Your poverty
Maybe Your body Lord was shaped by foods You hated
Maybe You sometimes walking to the market / Felt everybody even only
for a moment / Glancing at You
knew Lord You lived on figs
Lord and You hated figs and always had
And on the day You overturned the tables of the money-changers
You also cursed a fig tree never to produce / Fruit again
because You had come to it hungry Lord
and found it barren
Shane McCrae is the author of Mule, Blood, Forgiveness Forgiveness, The Animal Too Big to Kill, and three chapbooks. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Best American Poetry, Seattle Review, Pleiades, LIT and elsewhere, and he has received a Whiting Writer’s Award and a fellowship from the NEA. He teaches at Oberlin College and in the brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University.