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poems     
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Backyard Lights On by Josette Urso
"Backyard w/ Lights On" by Josette Urso
Jonah's Complaint

"What is this you have done?"

"Listen,
I was hiding at the bottom
of the boat

"when a wind rose up
across the wet
mother of an ocean

"which whipped clear innocence
into a frenzy.
The water curled

"as if before her own breath,
and so I hid,
the child of her punishment.

"And the men were seized
with great fear, not cowardice,
unsubtle Mephistopheles: Leviathan.

"Dear Lord,
I sought the velvet tortures
of your Faust,

"but a Jew
in a heavy sea
exacts the value of his weight,

"so I was tossed
before my gold,
after my cows,

"while the sailors slipped away,
unworthy of my good God's
rapt attention."


Marc Penka 2002



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