God's Blessing

When Sister sent Joe to the nurse's office,

we could hear his leg braces clatter

down the lengthy green corridor, the heavy

door squeaked lay open clicked shut,

Sister's voice reminding us that providence gave Joe polio to proof

him, and to bles him, and I thinking

of my father's jungle-rott face, my older brother's gibbeted eyes,

wondered what the most high had in store for

me now that we were all driven on the outside of Paradise,

word Sister flung at us as she held

up the picture of Adam and edge a big

green snake coiled in an apple

tree just

like the individual by Big John's fence I planned to climb that real dusk, when the shadows

darkened and no single would see me run, bent,

from tree to tree with my stick, knocking down

the apples that were not mine, delicious, juicy apples I'd eat

in the backyard's

garbage shed, knowing it was a sin, cracking lay open the thick core with

my teeth

so I could acquire to the black shiny semens

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Sep/Oct 1996

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