The Fare Forward Poetry Competition: First Place
Say Jonah was right and grace is wasted
By MEH
Say Jonah was right and grace is wasted
on the unworthy. that suicide is
preferable to saving men who will
repent in sackcloth and ashes, only
to neck-drag Brown bodies behind pickups
between the sermon and Sunday supper.
who leave boys chained to barbwire fences,
faces pistol-whipped to a pulp, fractured
skulls shining like the floor their wives bleed on
if said supper is not ready, if eyes
raise too high. but great is Thy faithfulness—
morning by morning Your mercies cover
a multitude of sins. save Your great fish,
the storm, sun, and worm. Nineveh should burn.
Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020), Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020), and the Colored page (Sundress Publications, forthcoming). The editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, MEH’s recent poetry is appearing or forthcoming in Massachusetts Review, New York Quarterly, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Relief, and Shenandoah. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.