Day: May 9, 2023

prayer for rainprayer for rain

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:10 pm

dear lord,
if i take this cup of bitter dregs you’ve given me to drink
and dash it against your rock,
will sweet, cool water flow, washing away the knifing shards?
will there be enough to quench my thirst and cleanse myself?

or will i simply find myself still stuck in your immense desert,
with only my cupped, supplicating hands, and no water—
merely clods of damp soil i’ve clawed from deep beneath
the foot of your burning bush?

then you can watch me place your dirt in my mouth,
and suck until it’s dry.

lord, you are so easily amused.

(Published in gutter eloquence magazine, Issue #20, March 2012; copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

in a weightless worldin a weightless world

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:35 am

i thought it was because they were poor that they didn’t have
sliding glass doors in vietnam during the war

my father walked right into ours after he came back

knocked his glasses off
left a smudge

he said he wasn’t used to sliding glass doors

the dog had run into the door, too
once, in a hurry, before my father came back
left a dog-nose smudge lower down

my mother kept everything very clean
all smudges were soon gone

that door was clean to nonexistence
clean enough to eat off, in a weightless world

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:33 am

“We’re now in a situation where the greatest Ukrainian warlord in history is a Jew, which proves that God is Jewish and has a sense of humor.” – Timothy Snyder, “The Making of Modern Ukraine: Ukrainian Ideas in the 21st Century” (emphasis in original)