Philip Kobylarz, Proof of the Divine $37.99, Photograph
The weather forecast deceived
Tears instead of rain
Nobody is resurrected
Dahlias have blossomed
In every petal a breath of air
In each of us is a breath of air
God was called by his patronymic
God could not be imagined as a feminine
They believed in God according to the national
Calling a patch of unfortunate land a state a country
Ripe apples in the garden
And tomato juice floated through the veins
In the spring, lips kiss
Because they can’t stand their ugliness
The weather forecast deceived
In the spring, bones come down on the grass
And nothing happens
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Mykyta Ryzhykh
Review by Jared Pearce
I really like the tension between the dual capacities and urges to believe and to not believe in a deity. I think it’s best delivered in the second set, “Nobody is resurrected / Dahlias have blossomed” where the religious view is cast aside and the nonreligious view comes into focus, even though it hearkens to the religious. There’s a similar sense, though going the other direction, later in the poem, “In the spring, lips kiss / Because they can’t stand their ugliness.”
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
How true: picture the One God as a female is just something we wouldn’t think of and that can’t be good. The One God, descendant of a long dynasty of men from which He inherited His name, too often is the God of one gender, one nation, one side of the argument. No good. Contradictory at best, at our feet fall the forecasts, the prophecies, one per channel, one per holy book, one per broadcasting agenda. We present our divines with the only reality we know, His children and their missing body parts, an offering onto which any notion of Superior Being worth of this title should rest uncomfortably, I know I would.
Blasphemous rumours aside, that ladder, broken, rushed upwards to reach, I imagine, the top of the wall from which to access a better world – that ladder is for me the ultimate emblem of hope which, you’ve guessed it, in all Neo-Latin languages is a female noun. Having seen what we have seen, do we realistically expect Hope to come and sustain us in the climb of our lives?