Becka Mckay    Delray Beach     (Lucia Leao)
Leviticus as Punchline for a Bad Joke 

The president walked into history 
like a battery of gnats swarming summer’s 

lost wine. Each commandment you unearth--
hued in chalcedony and anthracite, 

divided with camels and cattle--
offers further fuel for the argument 

with God: Did He mean, in the end, to punish 
us or protect us? Are we experiment 

or intention? The president was disgorged 
into history, bad meat in a linen napkin. 

Some of us gave up. Some of us said 
let the consecrated field be the home he cannot 

destroy. Maybe everything that refuses 
God’s abstraction becomes a kind of mutation, 

like the thought that warps and splits on its way 
to the word. The president met history 

dressed in suit and tie but would not shake hands. 
Let the consecrated field remain in the grip 

of the gleaners, who crouch at the edges 
and wait, sheaving their needs against darkness.
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