- desiderata [iv] (the kingdom of God)
- Talker: On Self Portrait at 33 [One Good Eye] (2008) by J. Kirk Richards
- That Sunday Afternoon
- Litany (in Forty Short Stanzas)
- This poem is not the seer stone—
- For the Man in the Red Jacket
- I once found religion at the dollar store
- Submerged: Three Variations on Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987)
- Diptych for Jesus (Lover) on the Cross
- Harvest: On Every Knee Shall Bow (2008) by J. Kirk Richards
After James Goldberg
As the subtitle and attribution suggest, the poem riffs on and converses with James Goldberg’s “The Kingdom of God,” which appears as the first entry in his 2015 collection Let Me Drown with Moses. In particular, my poem takes up the botanical imagery of his last stanza:
The kingdom of God
Is not the tree. It’s a seed so small
it can slip between our fingers—
any moment we may forget,
tomorrow we might wake and wonder
if we ever held it at all.
Image used with artist’s permission.
After Revelation (2004) by J. Kirk Richards
Image used with artist’s permission.
After Untitled [Cristo Series] (2013) by J. Kirk Richards
Click/tap the image to access a virtual showing of the series.
Image used with artist’s permission.
After Seer Stone (2015)* by Casey Jex Smith
Image used with artist’s permission.
Me reading the poem as originally published.
After Olive Leaf (2007) by J. Kirk Richards
Image used with artist’s permission.
Image from Wikipedia.
The epigraph of the diptych and the subtitle of section ii. (“the shadow of thy wing”) come from Charles Wesley’s hymn “Jesus, Lover of My Soul” (1740).
Image used with artist’s permission.
Image use with artist’s permission.