Daniel

I’ll put up with it

once a year,

tie the wormy

laces of my

Converse,

not to look

respectable

but to ensure

I will not trip

around the altar.

The priest is

wisely guided

by the Spirit’s

Holy voice,

by the pages

of gilded gold,

a den of hungry

lions, Revelation’s

Book of Life,

the blood of

bleating lambs.

I’ve been reading

on my phone

the average lion

has 30 teeth—4

enormous canines—

by which to clench

its struggling prey,

kill it with a crunch,

then gleefully

tear its carcass,

devour its pulsing flesh.

Yes, I choose to love

a cat

more than anything

else in the world.

And yes, I’ll offer

raucous cheers

whenever the mouse

is in its mouth,

but I humbly have

an issue

with the fate of un-

believers,

how the favoured

of the Christ

come out on top,

despite their weekly

pledge

that they repent 

but never do,

this mercy un-

deserved, the bug I

pluck from the spider’s

gluey lattice,

this biased, cold

salvation—

and though it’s

cruel to the arachnid,

the creep of slow

starvation, its nom de

guerre is grace,

a biblical

sobriquet,

but I know it

by an epithet

I cannot wail

out loud,

despite the people

right behind us in

the pew, singing their

shitty guts out to

the Lord.

Andreas Gripp

April 17, 2025

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