Disrobing God

Shave off that shaggy beard.

You are no one’s grandfather.

Remove the illusion

of white skin.

Admit the lie

that hides

beneath white robes.

Tell the truth.

You did not beget a son.

No one died for our sins.

No one prewrites the script

for our lives.

O we have created you,

fashioned from ego and hubris,

in our own image,

surrounded you with angels

waiting for us

through pearly gates.

Out of the wet tissues

of our need, out of the

sinking clay of our fears,

we whisper prayers in the ear

of a deaf universe.

I am not so foolish.

Redo your curriculum vitae.

Make up a different story.

One I can believe in.

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Jane Ellen Glasser’s poetry has appeared in journals, such as Hudson Review, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Georgia Review. In the past, she reviewed poetry books for the Virginian-Pilot, edited poetry for the Ghent Quarterly and Lady Jane’s Miscellany, and co-founded the nonprofit arts organization and journal New Virginia Review. A first collection of her poetry, Naming the Darkness, with an introduction by W. D. Snodgrass, was issued by Road Publishers in 1991. She won the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry 2005 for Light Persists, and The Long Life won the Poetica Publishing Company Chapbook Contest in 2011. The Red Coat (2013), Cracks (2015), and In the Shadow of Paradise (2017), are all available from FutureCycle Press. Selected Works: 1980-2019 is due out in 2019. See more at www.janeellenglasser.com.