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Religion

Spencer Reece: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

Spencer Reece  web sm.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

______________________________________

Ephphatha   

        for Dorothy Moran

 

            When the pandemic hit, the priest

died first. Refrigerator trucks chilled the dead. 

The parish stacked the hymnals in tubs

and St. Mark’s/ San Marcos closed in Queens,

the mocked Simon and Garfunkel borough

where coins in dryers clickety-clicked like clocks

in European town squares.

 

            Seven months later, Roosevelt Avenue

jounces with mango slices in Zip-locks. 

The vestry interviews me.  Last day of August,

no AC, we sweat and fidget with our N95 masks. 

The wardens, Henry and Jorge, jigger

the broken tumbler to unlock the safe. 

“Cut the parish hall in half, don’t fundraise,

leverage the lot. Less people in church,”

says a new bishop from his Zoom-perch.  

 

            A woman stands in the garden.

Forever a woman stands in the garden. 

She rides the 7 to work, is over ninety,

first woman to work on Wall Street. 

Much she won’t tell or only tell me.

My invisible incomprehensible work.

I go where I am sent.

 

            A bloated deacon gossips and picks

at the many pimples on his forehead.

O, buckling blue esotery falling all apart!

My anonymity increases with each entrance.

Will our hope be transfigured by this dust?

My black uniform sticks to my pocked back

like a sealed envelope.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Spencer Reece is the canon and rector of historic St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Wickford, Rhode Island.  He has published  three books of poetry:  The Clerk's TaleThe Road to Emmaus, and Acts.  In addition, he published The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Poet’s Memoir and All The Beauty Still Left: A Poet’s Painted Book of Hours, watercolors.  He edited Counting Time Like People Count Stars: Poems By The Girls of Our Little Roses. He founded an author series connected to his church called the 14 Gold Street Author Series, in which writers read at the public library and are hosted for a meal at the rectory.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________          Art Garfunkel  left  and Paul Simon in front of the latter’s childhood home at 137-62 70 Road in Kew Gardens Hills  spring 1975.                 Art Garfunkel, left, and Paul Simon in front of the latter’s childhood home at 137-62 70 Road in Kew Gardens Hills, spring 1975.


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"Lively and affectionate" Publishers Weekly

Radio

I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours later
to the greatness
of Teddy Wilson
"After You've Gone"
on the piano
in the corner
of the bedroom
as I enter
in the dark


from New and Selected Poems by David Lehman

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