Nick Vujicic
But Zev, you had no business sending me
that YouTube about a guy
who was born with no limbs except
for one clawed flipper,
who walks with his butt, articulately charms
an auditorium full of schoolgirls who cry
as he demonstrates “*You can get up,
however hard it is*,” then one by one hug
the handsome face above the living herm.
We see him eating, not who cut his food.
He praises God, his life, his ministry.
You like such testimonials.
You think that someday one will get to me.
Actually they prove nothing.
I would have told him to curse God and die.
Mall, Northern Virginia
She’s dancing for the fun of it, plus
some pittance. All sudden
elbows and hips, black hair and peppermint-
striped spandex; close enough
to childhood, still, that she can’t run out
of energy, or rapid Spanish
gossip for a more stolidly
twisting friend. She’s dancing
in front of a jungle-themed smoothie joint,
opening today, which had hoped
for drop-ins from the upscale kidswear
and houseware places, but they’re gone,
and the dollar store and nail salon
are far. Big tangled balloons,
the chairs white-plastic wobblers, coffee vile;
it won’t last a month, but today she’s dancing,
imagining broadcasts, bounding
indoors to shake it for her MS-13
boyfriend trying the Mango-Banana Godzilla.
Reprieve
Only fetishized bureaucracy
could outweigh, at that moment,
that purpose, but he was let out
of a gas van. There by mistake:
not Jewish; listed
as “useful” though incurable.
The guards unbarred the door, a doctor
called his name. Instead he was chained
to a shovel, by the end clearing rubble
and corpses from bombsites.
Receiving, thankfully, no further treatment,
and never, despite orders, forgetting.
He discovered that he who can say
*Only I alone am escaped
to tell thee* goes generally unheard.
Especially when he has,
under any regime, been called mad,
and when what he wants to describe
is not the thing everyone knows
but doesn’t discuss. Among
the other “mental defectives”
in the van was a woman. Before
they shut the door, he saw
her expression, contemptuous, calm,
and her gesture:
a hand beside her face
impatiently brushing away
a world that contained such things,
dismissing it. He also
antagonized people, priests especially,
by saying he wasn’t grateful for
his escape. It wasn’t deserved,
any more than her death. If that
was grace, he said, it’s typical
of God, Who I’ve learned
is the same one that Hitler said he served.
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