I Found God

I found God in a Baptist Church
in Milwaukee.
Faith,  small hands and
scratched bibles.

Warm cookies.

The delicate and the children.
Their names in coded
words on the skin under

my arms. .

Dedicate: the
day to the great E. Perience.

There is a new Age
coming.

I smoke a cigarette.

God arrived in fancy clothes.

Women dressed, frown.
Still voices in the

Wilderness

Witness the Beloved
baptism of perfumed
sinners

I smoked for them all.
My fee for being previously

Apostate.


Caroline Shank

Red is the rose
and the polish on my toes

Red is the kiss on my cheek
and my dress– truly chic

Red is also blood
and bodies in the mud

Red is red
Love and dead.

there is a pair
of angel wings
hanging
on a peg in my closet
dust dulls
their snow brilliance
but they are there
as a reminder

i can peel back the sky
and fly away
if i can't take it here
anymore
******* the wings
and jump
******* the wings
with a belly full of pills

most of the time
i don't think of them
but they are still there
old friend
their plush embrace
brushes over my scars
maybe they won't need to
come with me
when i die

Patches over patches,
That’s what I’m doing,
To this wound you give,

Drowning in this feeling,
Wish this is how deep our love is.

going home isn’t always
returning to a place.
sometimes
it is returning to yourself.