The Connector
The Connector
Photo by Unsplash.
Photo by Unsplash.

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

Kate Betts
Kate Betts is a staff writer for The Connector. She is an undergraduate writing major with an obsession with "Once Upon A Time" and her adorable gray kittens.