Snake Day

God is strange. He killed my father,
     and He is everywhere, all of the time.

He is spread across the twinkling shingles and the clean, white siding
     of this windowless church, this steepleless church with no sign.

You wouldn’t know it’s a church by looking at it.
     You know it’s a church because I’m telling you it’s a church
          and I know it’s a church because someone told me.

That’s how this one works.

I’m not inside of the church. You are. I have never been inside of it,
          because I never wanted to be inside of it,
even with those open-mouth doors. Are you still awake? I hear them say,
                    There is something that won’t leave my mind.

So where am I? I’m in a bedroom full of beautiful things.
     I’m in a bedroom and I’m writing this down.

They worship using snakes in that church.
     They pull snakes out of boxes and they hold the snakes up under dull, yellow lights.
          It’s not scientific.

The people pray, and sing, and chant, and the whole time they hold on to the snakes.
     I’m not going to talk about it like it’s a trick.

It’s a ritual, and you weren’t exactly invited to partake.
     But here we are.

You’re in their church and I’m in a bedroom. Where will you go from here?
     You go to my church, in my father’s living room, where he plays his mahogany guitar.

He invites the neighbors over to do church in the living room.
The neighbors come over, in work boots and school clothes, to do church in the living room.
          He plays his mahogany guitar. He loves that thing.

I’m going to sell that guitar, after he dies, to a stranger outside of a coffee shop, because I won’t want
to see it anymore, because I would rather see some twenty dollar bills nestled in my wallet than see
     my dead father’s guitar,

and I’m going to regret it. Look at how beautiful it is in his hands.

He plays his mahogany guitar and you sing with him.
     You sing new arrangements of old hymns and try newly to arrange your old self.
          It’s not scientific, either,

but does it feel different from where you just were, in that church with the snakes?
                         Do you love the sound
of his mahogany guitar?

You are going to take communion now, using grape juice and bread my mother made
               in a strange little machine. Watch.

He loves to serve you communion.
          He loves that mahogany guitar.

I want you to tell me something now that you’ve been to both of these places,
          once you’re comfortable and ready to talk.

Did you feel God in one place more than the other?

Do you prefer snakes or mahogany guitars?

I’m in this bedroom. I don’t have the answers. I have beautiful hands that hold beautiful things.

I pray often that they will not kill me. Uselessly, I pray
                    they won’t die.