But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take thy coat also.
Luke 6:27-29
On the bus, the clickbait knows
where I am:
“Ten Beautiful Birds of Prey
Sighted in Uganda.”
Beaudouin’s snake-eagle
with its six-foot wingspan,
the euphonious lizard buzzard,
and cackling Linnaean squawks
gliding together over the White Nile—
Number six would amaze me.
At the martyrs’ shrine, they show
where the Christians were burned
where they marched to posts and rope,
where they stayed, gazing upwards
even after the cords
sizzled away.
The grasshopper buzzard
circles bushfires.
A long-crested eagle perches
among the blooms of a red-hot poker tree.
We all spin, magnets between us
similar poles forcing my back
to arch toward you,
your belly to pit away.
In the pamphlet,
I see the saints,
in old photographs,
lead-faced, ashen.
Everywhere around me
a sea of embers
in the yellow and red and orange
glow of each gomesi.
I recall that Jesus warned
not to let the left hand know
what charity
the right does,
and—there in the amber blaze
of African dusk—
that if the light
within is darkness,
it is the greatest
darkness.
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Professional editor J. Todd Hawkins writes and lives in Texas. He is the author the chapbooks Ten Counties Away (Finishing Line Press) and more recently What Happens When We Leave (forthcoming from Blackbeard Books), for which he won the William D. Barney Memorial Chapbook Contest. His poetry has appeared in AGNI, The Bitter Oleander, The Louisville Review, Bayou Magazine, Sakura Review, and American Literary Review.
Photo by Andrew Itaga.
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