THE ARTICLE:
“A Crisis in Amish Country”
by Malcolm Gay
September 3, 2010
THE POEM:
String
Horseandbuggy aself into the house of the Lord
where houses are built from the bottom inside of people’s hearts
and lying to any man is the same as lying to Jesus
is worse than any foulplay inside of a child
in Curryville, Missouri
you can excommunicate
the Devil out of a man
you can pray the spirit
back into him
horseandbuggy aself across the string border
where we the people is the start of a world of
string rooms that become fields that become forests
there is a man who can penetrate the stomach aches
out of girls of ten and three years
stacked onto each other
like the bodies of two cousins
pray for us sinners
in German
in private
if he would repent and be honest
wingspans would materialize
bodies would send invitations
in the form of outstretched limbs
a body of people would
in-communicate a child of God
there is a man whose children are about the same as
and whose one unborn one day will be the
same kind of packaging that minds of this kind
like to open with boxcutters and devour the insidesof
I know a man whose world is
a tangle of string
What of the girls he has strung up?
