I dream a city full of ruined men. Women like phantoms giving themselves to lust. God gives some of us exactly what we want. Like these women, these lovers, their little library. Who do they think they’re fooling? Not God. Not me. Books about the glittering nothing much? For my part, I could leave them be. A city full of drink and marbled eyes. Of moneyed women softening into sin. Sometimes I feel alone with the truth I know: a man is either chosen or he’s not. The rest is rot. The whole truth? Sometimes I feel alone with God. I dream a town full of ruined men. Their fears like Communion bread stuck in their throats. A town of men too rich for their own good. I’ve become too rich for my own God. There are things a man doesn’t want to learn. Those women and their maddening books. The church has grown like kudzu in the sun. I dream a church full of ruined men.

Rachel Custer

is a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts fellow. She is the author of God’s Country (Terrapin Books, forthcoming) and The Temple She Became (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals, including Rattle, OSU: The Journal, B O D Y, American Journal of Poetry, Antigonish Review, and Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L), among others.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Three Poems by Rachel Custer in ONE ART: a journal of poetry (18 May 2022)

⚡ Featured Writer Interview: Rachel Custer by Adekunle Adewunmi in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters (18 January 2020)