We are pleased to offer our Poets Read series in honor of National Poetry Month 2019 and will run it throughout the month of April.
Every day in April, our website and our YouTube channel will feature the voice of a poet whose work has appeared in our pages over the past year. On Sundays, we will offer two poets for your enjoyment.
Today’s poem is The Wrong God by Claire Scott and it appeared in the Winter 2019 issue of Gyroscope Review.
The Wrong God
by Claire Scott
I followed the wrong god home
he strutted with a hip hop gait
so positive, self-assured, lightly humming
a few bars of a Bach cantata
Ich habe genug
so I followed, scrambling to keep up
until we reached one of his many mansions
glowing friendly in fading dusk
leopards and lambs curled
on the lush green lawn
I checked him out on line
could he change water to wine
did he offer gluten free wafers
did he promise no right wingers would
slip past St. Peter: pass, pass, pass
but that was then
when we still believed in a future for all
no one percent stealing the show
grabbing the best parts of the planet
trampling the oppressed with Gucci boots
now I listen to the frayed chords of his choir
the bleat of terrified lambs, the snap of jaws
see his dented chariot, his decaying
house, his creeping crabgrass
& withered black-bone trees
an aging god & me scrunched together
on a tarnished throne watching
endless loops of The Ten Commandments
drinking bottle after bottle
of cheap white wine
About the Poet: Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.