Nick Fancher, Untitled
so this one time at wednesday night kiddie church
Esther Shipsey
I remember some nice young couple groomed
for ministry named Chris and Jamie, probably,
playing guitar and singing for like fifty kids
and the woman, Jamie, I think, it’s usually
Jamie, taught us some song and I remember
her saying they’d keep playing the same song
faster and faster until Chris’s fingers bled,
which was a novel concept for me, you know,
age seven, that you could hurt yourself in
ecstasy and duty and the vigor of repetition
over and over until you washed unwitting
children in the blood of Chris, that the harmony
& pulse of the room had costs that were hidden
from me & I remember dim awareness that
some kind of hidden strings behind the drywall
vibrated at the frequency of my mother’s anger
at what Jamie had said, that she’d said that, that
she’d sorta dry-snitched on where sawdust and
sand come from, how everything becomes
smaller than itself sooner or later or sooner,
maybe it’s an American thing because we are
doing it again. everybody knows what is
coming. nobody remembers they’re children.
Esther Shipsey
I remember some nice young couple groomed
for ministry named Chris and Jamie, probably,
playing guitar and singing for like fifty kids
and the woman, Jamie, I think, it’s usually
Jamie, taught us some song and I remember
her saying they’d keep playing the same song
faster and faster until Chris’s fingers bled,
which was a novel concept for me, you know,
age seven, that you could hurt yourself in
ecstasy and duty and the vigor of repetition
over and over until you washed unwitting
children in the blood of Chris, that the harmony
& pulse of the room had costs that were hidden
from me & I remember dim awareness that
some kind of hidden strings behind the drywall
vibrated at the frequency of my mother’s anger
at what Jamie had said, that she’d said that, that
she’d sorta dry-snitched on where sawdust and
sand come from, how everything becomes
smaller than itself sooner or later or sooner,
maybe it’s an American thing because we are
doing it again. everybody knows what is
coming. nobody remembers they’re children.