Modern Gods

By JOHN FREEMAN

 

Backlit by the glow
from a small passageway,
he kneels into the fog
of yellow light,
head kissing the carpet.
I step around him,
respecting his privacy, when 
the mat becomes not prayer 
rug but builder’s tool,
a black piece of tarmac, laid down
before the bank so he could
peer close, fix the dead 
motion sensor so that people 
with money could 
be seen, all doors opening
for them.

 

John Freeman is editor of the literary annual Freeman’s. His latest books are Dictionary of the Undoing; Tales of Two Planets, an anthology of writing on inequality and the climate crisis; and The Park, a collection of poems. The executive editor of Literary Hub, he lives in New York. His works has been translated into twenty-four languages.

[Purchase Issue 19 here.]

Modern Gods

Related Posts

Poetry Feature: Poems from the Immigrant Farmworker Community

MIGUEL M. MORALES
Days into the promise of a new year, resolutions plentiful, blossoming, / seven farmworkers were shot and killed harvesting mushrooms in Half Moon Bay. / Those of us who sprouted from families, whose hands and backs worked the land, / waited for news of our farmworker siblings.

A White House against a blue sky, with a watertower on top.

Two Poems by Liza Katz Duncan

LIZA KATZ DUNCAN
First the marsh grass came, then the motherwort, / then bitterberry and honeysuckle. Blackbirds, / gulls and grackles built their nests. / Mourning doves call from the eaves / of the old factory, closed during the Depression.

sunflower against a backdrop of sunlight

August 2023 Poetry Feature

L.S. KLATT
My neighbor really has nothing to do / but mow his grass & watch television. / It’s the quiet life for him. The adhesive / bandage of his tongue comes out as / rarely as his partner. And the dog? I / could say anything about him & no one / would know the difference. That sounds / cruel.