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.