Rent Poem by Vernon Adrian Emuang

The baptismal water dried decades ago,
leaving only a faint salt crust on the skin
and the smell of damp hymnals.
They wanted the universe pinned to a board like a dead beetle,
six days of cosmic carpentry,
a roof over a flat floor,
fear holding the rafters up.
But the dirt kept moving.
The cells kept whispering their long, slow history of becoming.
I cannot argue with the silence before the Big Bang,
or whatever name we give the weight behind the dark.
But the man from Nazareth?
He wasn't a stained-glass window.
He was dust in the throat,
a threat to the landlords,
someone who looked at a crowd of hungry people
and didn't see a marketplace
He, or he, saw a family that needed bread.
The church built an empire on His execution.
They turned His executioners' cross into jewelry.
They told me to love the institution
and ignore the eviction notices down the street.
But I am looking for Him in the strikes,
in the mutual aid kitchens,
in the cold hands of neighbors passing soup through the winter.
If the word became flesh,
it didn't happen so we could argue about biology.
It happened so we could look at each other without flinching.
Keep your pews.
Keep the literal geometry of your heaven.
I would rather be broken and useful on the tarmac,
subversive,
and quietly heretical,
walking behind the ghost who actually cared
about the rent.