RYAN APPLE

Ryan Apple’s first chapbook, Stars and Sparrows Alike, will be published in late 2020 through Finishing Line Press.  His work has appeared in various journals, and nine of his poems were recently featured in the Poiema Poetry Series anthology In a Strange Land: Introducing Ten Kingdom Poets.  Ryan lives in Lansing, Michigan, with his wife Darcie and their six children.  He enjoys sharing life with his local church family, ping-pong, playing guitar and mbira, and video games with two or less buttons.  Read more at www.ryanapple.net. 

IT IS NOT THE LORD’S SUPPER YOU EAT

The Lord owns all the cattle

grazing on a thousand hills;

The Lord, He is my shepherd

and I shall not have want.

So whose bare table have I joined

for supper on this Sunday morning?

We raise our thimbleful 

of grape juice, toasting to the time

he stood atop the barren hill

speaking down to crowds below;

he parceled out the five small loaves

between 5,000 hungry men.

So mannered, so austere 

this host which hardly appears the bread 

of life, glutton or drunkard, 

good shepherd, or frankly, anything

else our Lord was called back when

He sat and ate with sinners

and filled their cups to overflow.

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