.

 

In Place Of A Curse

“At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected...”

At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected,
I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who,
having been slugged no harder than anyone else,
never got up again, neither to fight back,
nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.

They who are wholly broken, and they in whom mercy is understanding,
I shall embrace at once and lead to pillows in heaven.
But they who are the meek by trade, baiting the best of their betters with extortions of a mock-helplessness,
I shall take last to love, and never wholly.

Let them all in Heaven - I abolish Hell -
but let it be read over them as they enter:
Beware the calculations of the meek, who gambled nothing
gave nothing, and could never receive enough.

.  .  .  .  .  

Sent in by Leslie Harpold (email, web), who provides her biography as follows: “No matter what you've heard, Leslie is a genius and everyone loves her. Get to know her now before she gets as famous as she's destined to be, so you can say 'I knew her back in the days she lived in Hell's Kitchen.' Despite her greatness, she is not stuck up at all, and a friend to children, animals and the elderly. She has no secrets Well, not many.”

Sent in by Leslie Harpold (email, web), who provides her biography as follows: “No matter what you've heard, Leslie is a genius and everyone loves her. Get to know her now before she gets as famous as she's destined to be, so you can say 'I knew her back in the days she lived in Hell's Kitchen.' Despite her greatness, she is not stuck up at all, and a friend to children, animals and the elderly. She has no secrets Well, not many.”


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About the author: I've been running this website from 1997. For a living I write stories and essays, program computers, edit things, and help people launch online publications. (LinkedIn). I wrote a novel. I was an editor at Harper's Magazine for five years; then I was a Contributing Editor; now I am a free agent. I was also on NPR's All Things Considered for a while. I still write for The Morning News, and some other places.

If you have any questions for me, I am very accessible by email. You can email me at ford@ftrain.com and ask me things and I will try to answer. Especially if you want to clarify something or write something critical. I am glad to clarify things so that you can disagree more effectively.

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