[bibleshapedcyst]crooked.
contact at xtobykeithx@protonmail.com
on apples, trees, adam & eve, and the snake i killed at the creek
the preacher, he said - the preacher said a poor woman who puts a penny in the offering plate has given much more to god than the rich man who tosses a hundred-dollar bill in the same plate with no fear of the physical condemnation that bears down on most. the condemnation of the landlord or repo man is colder than the absence of god. but a good preacher don't bring that kinda thing up too often.
my father, he aproached advice with the flippancy of a rich man. he feared no condemnation from no man. and god's didn't confront him most days either.
you gotta drown her kittens as soon as they come out, or else the milk will dry in her tits and we'd have to put her down too.
this never bothered me too much. a five gallon bucket baptism sounded like a merciful and swift kind of death, in fact i heard from older kids that drowning is the most peaceful kind of death. it almost happened to me a couple times, and i's fine. i was raised with a farmer's attitude toward the disposability of animals, though we didn't live near any farms i knew of. animals were seen as a sort of tool moreso than a companion. though years later both my dad and myself would cut whiskey with tear-drops when our dog died.
the kittens probably gurgled a bit. i remember chirping meows. i hope they believed in heaven.
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mom ran off when i was too young to stop her. before she set out, she took me out back. awareness flew off my face to meet the lightning bugs in the air. she musta felt the need to say something that sticks. she told me when she was young, she would catch lightning bugs too, with harmful intent to beautify herself and her friends. she had friends, my dad did not. she would pinch the bug's bulb off as it lit up for the last time and wear it as jewelry. I wanted to be beautiful too and carried on the family tradition. i'm not so sure i want to forgive myself.
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my father was out back crying with a shoebox in his hand. he told me there was a bird in the front yard who had faced his own condemnation at the hands of the stray cats in town. dad held him and fed him and told him that by the grace of god and the hand of man, he would fly again. my dad shed tears because man's hands were once more bested by god's grace. dad's tears made the cardboard droop because the cardboard held the truth: no good man's intervention can course-correct the will of the lord. dad made that bird a bed soft as an angel's breast and cut a hole in that cardboard the size of an exhaust pipe. that black bird would drift off peacefully into the air once again.
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the jaws of a terrier are an unforgiving ball of bone and sinew. them jaws - like the lord - are no respecter of persons. and it's those unrelenting jaws, those jaws, they sent me back to the advice of my father. see, the neckbones of a kitten are more forgiving than those of a terrier and its through an unrelenting need of my own to be the one to stand and take action that i constructed an angel's breast bed for a kitten who chirped toward heaven. hole the size of a tailpipe just as i's taught. i told my roommates to go inside as i fired up the cavalier.
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a copperhead raised up like they do in the movies and i held a rock above my head eager to defend our campsite under the bridge. he hissed and protested his fate before looking toward the sky. the rough-hewn voice of my friend told me that snake, that corruptor of man, was our recently-passed friend and that i had just cut him down in his prime once more. i still cry myself to sleep some nights.
-t. james chapman