Wrung-Out God

Wrung-Out God

Sarah Crowley Chestnut

The apricot tree drops
leaves once yellow-glad to the dirt.
I am wearing an age-old shirt
& the children are playing shop

with the silk tree’s seed pods.
Every passing car raises a cloud
no matter how slow it goes
on this ash-and-gravel road.

A scrub jay sinks his spade-beak
into the chest of earth so dry
& rodent tunneled it could gulp
the bird down whole.

I hear you & I am trying
to drop, like this bird, an acorn
into every perilous gap.
But I can’t summon the rain…

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Sarah Crowley Chestnut
Poet & Writer

Sarah lives and works at L’Abri Fellowship in Southborough, Massachusetts with her husband and two children. She keeps a small vegetable garden, a sourdough starter and a messy desk. Sarah’s poetry and creative non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in CRUX, Red Rock Literary Journal, LETTERS, The Rabbit Room, Three Things Newsletter, and elsewhere. She hosts a local, monthly gathering, Poetry in the Round for conversation about and between poems. Sarah has a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Regent College and was a recipient of the Luci Shaw Prize for Creative Writing. Her poem, “Simon Hears Tell of the Crucifixion” (CRUX) won first prize in the 2018 Higher Goals Awards from the Evangelical Press Association. Sarah is an alumna of the Tupelo Press Manuscript Conference and is working on her first book-length collection of poetry.

Photography by Kseniya Budko