new from above/ground press: More of How to Read the Bible, by J-T Kelly

More of How to Read the Bible
J-T Kelly
$6

More of How to Read the Bible

Moses always disappearing to ask you what to do.
Comes back with a snake on a stick.
Comes back with water from a staff-struck rock.
Comes back with the law.
Comes back with his face shining.
Where would we be if he gave all this up for
the loneliness of the mountain,
of the heart?

When I am alone, you are with me. But I am not alone.
We are practically legion down here,
suffering, sinning, singing.
We go back to our old ways in a New York minute.
Hide the affair behind the expense account.
Let the perjured testimony stand.
Turn away the boats at the beach.

How to be a people. How to have a god.
I'm not sure I can have you all by my lonesome.
Not sure I can sin without some solidarity.
Not sure salvation
parses out the individual.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis. He lives in a brick house with his wife, their six children, his two parents, his brother, and a dog. Poems in The Denver Quarterly, Bad Lilies, and elsewhere. Chapbook Like Now (CCCP/Subpress, 2023). Full-length ms in circulation.

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