What One Person Said When Professor Girl's Relatives Came to Town

Dear Brother Kevin J. and Sister Jim D.—
I’m glad to see you’re bringing the Word back
to town. I’ve missed it since those snake handlers
got taken to Mayo and never returned.
Sure, there was that cold time baptizing all
comers at the Hickory Street boat launch, but
it hardly counted since the church school let out

to swell the numbers and it wasn’t full
immersion. I see earnest men every
two weeks strutting, shouting in the plaza
outside my office. They slap their books and wipe
their suffering foreheads all afternoon. They
call women whores, and every man twisted
rich and homo, and I know their word’s not

The Real One. They remind me of your dress,
Sister Jim D.: spotted like leopards, jumping
with their own carnality and violence.
They would eat you before saying grace. Those
earnest men remind me of your slim
goatee, Brother Kevin J., and your frilly
underslip: They would ride lightly

on a thing, and call themselves Motion.
They’d look inward on our tenderest
places—the cleft in your chin, the small glen
between my nipples—and hold those living,
empty spots against us. You see now why
I feel I’ve been waiting years for you two?
The river’s flooded twice since I’ve heard anything

like the Word whisper to me at breakfast
or brush my ear walking or send me its
sign language in the flash of a car passing
or an old lady bent over to pick up
a penny. Maybe I want too much from you.
Maybe. But I can tell from your eyes you’ve
seen the other side, and especially,

Sister Jim D., I can tell from your hair.