joshua patch

Joshua Patch is a poet and teacher from Dallas, Texas, where he is also pursuing doctoral studies in literature.  He has published poems in the Inkslinger, Biola University's literary journal.

glory

This is not that kind of glory, where you “give

glory” somewhere.  This is not that kind of “giving.”

I am proud, though.  Good proud.  Proud “of.”  

You deserve that.  I have just heard your femur

is cracked, and that is not even what I imagined

when I said I would never sign you up to play.

I imagined head damage, to tell you the truth.  You

would be in a wheel chair but only because

your synapses were no longer under the control

of your will.  We are here either way, you will have

the chair either way, but your will is still in place

and screaming what we used to call “bloody murder.”

You are deploying obscenities that only an intact

mind can form, and I am proud almost.  I give

this glory to the Lord!  Doctrinally, I have agency

to redirect toward him what I feel about your 

eight coming months of torment.  But that isn’t

the glory, and what is the glory has no recourse

to me.  You really are a child — what is the glory

is how you were eager to be crushed by another

child at the twenty yard line although there was

no conversion.  There is still the question of the win 

in your perfect mind, even right now.  Sopping 

agony like a full sponge, you testify the useless 

dignity of trying.  Health and the power to heal

travel by pain over every fear and hope, cussing

like I’ll never mention to your mother, and the Lord

alone knows the glory you take and give.

Read Joshua’s work and more in Solum Journal Volume I.