Hello and happy summer! It’s Kate Betts with our latest Writers’ Corner piece. This poem, ‘The Cemetery Where I Buried the Priest’, is by Adam Crow.
by Adam Crow
I walked in the woods last night
And found myself at the camp of the White Black man again
He was busy with his blowtorch as usual
I asked him to tell me a story because I couldn’t sleep
He asked me what I would like to hear
I told him
Tell me about the time you were an ambulance driver in The War
He said he couldn’t remember that right now
So he told me about his childhood in Detroit
He said
Real nature is in the city
With the pimps and murderers and punks
Father took us children on Sundays to contemplate blood stained sidewalks
Which was how he proved there was no God
I loved religion even though father hated it
I often skipped school to read about world religions
I especially loved the artwork
The stained glass windows the intricate calligraphy the carefully woven prayer rugs
So one day I walked up the hill to the Church on the beach
Where we buried my mother’s daughter in the sand
I followed the smell of incense to the Holy of Hollies
And found the Father praying
He looked at me and said
You’re late
I said Father are there any religious stories you know outside of the Bible
He said
Yes I worked for the government before I became a man of the cloth
I was one of the scientists who helped build the time machine
You see the nature of reality is pretty unnatural
I learned this the hard way
Upon graduating from school I was recruited by a group known as
The Brotherhood of Eternal Love
They wrote great poems in binary code which you should read some day
Unfortunately all the members are dead now
But when I met them they were still living
They told me they recently discovered that 2+2 does not always equal four
Why does this concern me
I never did well in math anyway
My high school math teacher was a redhead covered with tattoos
He would come in every morning and say
Listen class I’m not feeling well today
My daughter has stomach flu
So do all of you
And my son has just been drafted into The War
Math has been the one subject I could understand
I spent hours with a microscope looking at my hand
Confused by what the palm reader told me
Last night she said today would not happen
But it has
So today I am resigning I have already booked my flight so you can’t stop me
I’m leaving this god awful island
I’m going somewhere new where no one has been before
If even for a moment
And when I get there I won’t think
It will just be quiet and pristine
Like a rock concert
Like the rock concert I went to in high school with Kevin, Raphael, and the other guys in downtown Detroit
I drank until my face felt like electric Vaseline
And I met the girl of my dreams
In line for the bathroom
We kissed for hours
And the wall became the floor
In the days before The War
And I stroked her palm
Which kept her calm
As she cried hysterically
Telling me about her insomnia
She said
I haven’t slept in a week
And my bedroom creaks
Whenever I’m about to get some relief
So I get out of bed
To clear my head
Nothing was there so
I walked in the woods last night
And found myself at the camp of the White Black man again
