3:16—For
who hands o-
ver their on-
ly begot-
ten any-
thing to this
white-teethed world
if god so
loved ___I nev-
er knew him
3:16—World
would you believe
this mothafucka
at the Latin restaurant
leaned in then reeled
back and hollered___ Ewww
Daddy stinks!___ for all
to hear___ I admit
I hadn’t showered
since the day before
yesterday ___in my
normal absent-minded
kind of way ___so he
could have been right
which made me laugh
and made him double
down—he asked to see
my arm sniffed loud
as hell when I extended it
and this time: ___Ewww
Daddy stinks because he’s brown!
:—did I slap the angel
shit out of him ___did I joke
away another dark American
wrongness as preschool
play ___did I weep so that
the whole room would
let him hug my confusion
have I done any right thing
3:16—Blackout
by god—how come everlasting ___whosoever
begot not destruction ___whosoever
believeth not in lost ___who faces and clings not
to the never-happen of loveth ___only god
trusts the world eternal so uniquely
only god so dearly and greatly gave up
on death ___not we who recognize the desert
darkness of some deeds ___not we who serpent
the evil sentence of faith ___which of us
shall refuse the wrong Heaven when exposed
and entered by a plain finger of living light
and how forever is a savior anyway ___for whosoever
returned not from forsaken ___whosoever
can offer up a body—something whole
and prized—without risking the answer: perish
–Geffrey Davis
***
Geffrey Davis is the author of Revising the Storm (BOA Editions 2014), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalist. He is also the recipient of a Cave Canem Fellowship, the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Dogwood Prize in Poetry, the Wabash Prize for Poetry, the Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize, and nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Davis teaches at the University of Arkansas.
