PoemBowl 3

It's time for another face-off in the PoemBowl! You get to choose not just which of these is the winner, but also which poem gets to be ham-handed Nic Cage and which gets to be hand-hammed John Travolta... Okay, no more John Woo jokes, I promise - I can't afford the dove poop dry cleaning bills.

Incidentally, I decided to change the format mid-stream. It's going to be single-elimination instead of double-elimination. It's just too many rounds, and I don't want to burden you good folks overmuch. Not to mention, we're not deciding who lives and who dies, like Judge Dredd. But that would be awesome.

Cartoon Theology

Matt Quarterman

for Scott Cairns

“ ... let not thy left hand know 

what thy right hand doeth.”

-- Gospel According to St. Matthew, ch. 6, v. 3

In “Prince of Egypt,” God 
and Moses
speak with the same voice.
Swirling drawings of grey maelstrom
surround the all-consuming fire
which never consumes.
The elegant smoothness of the man
(startled in a silent movie way)
shrinks before that
looming
bulk.
And in contrast 
(to that contrast),
the command and
the complaint
are shades of the same.
God booms       }
Moses minces  } In crisp round tones,
an animated discussion
that Disney never did.


Funny, 
isn’t it?
How Jewish of God
to talk back
to himself....

Christ in the Wood

Matt Quarterman

He’s a surreptitious kind of savior, 

almost a wallflower in his messianic way.

His silence frightens me,

coming as it does from

a man so alone in the dark. 

He is not gloomy or menacing

but simply blank;

ribs poke out from his alabaster body 

like tent poles 

stretching out canvas.

And perhaps this torture has become casual,

I explain; his outstretched arms

convey just a shrug.

His head lolling to the side seems

almost sleepy.

The wooden structure frames him like a picture,

a portrait of nonchalance in the face of sacrifice.

After all, he has been here a while.

Perhaps saddest of all is his rootedness,

the feeling he is caught, transfixed to the spot.

It gives him some hint of nostalgia or 

the feeling of return to a town that’s unchanged.

The one thing we can know with certainty and no doubt

is that this is a Christ who will never come down.

Make the call: click here to choose a winner!