Feminist Poem for Children Disguised as a Religious Credo
Have you made right
with your maker?
No?
Then go.
Don’t forsake her.
Before you turn out the light,
Kiss Mommy goodnight.
A Brief Theodicy
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be saying,
“In a perfect world….” I wouldn’t be praying
For forgiveness for what I hadn’t done right,
Done partly because I lack perfect sight
In our imperfect world, where sin speeds along
On the freeway of life, past the river of wrong,
And God pulls you over like a traffic cop
At the celestial light where all must stop.
In a perfect world, there’d be no crime,
So God would be out of work all the time.
God only knows what he’d do without sin,
And that’s why we have this world we’re in
Though better known as a fiction writer, David Galef has published a boatload of poems in The Yale Review, Shenandoah, Witness, Measure, etc., and was once the featured poet in Light. His two poetry books are Flaws and Kanji Poems, his two poem chapbooks Lists and Apocalypses. He Zooms in as professor of English and creative writing program director at Montclair State U. He is also the editor of Vestal Review, the oldest flash fiction magazine on the planet.