The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: These Aren’t My Woods Anymore by Soon Jones

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You Cannot Serve God and Mammon

Mammon being the things of this world, the things
that hold you back from God’s will
to become a godly preacher’s wife
and produce many zealous, Christian soldiers.

(a girl you like tries to give you her number
and you run away, terrified
of your own wild animal desire)

You spend three years at the Bible college
in your church’s back lot, striving
for a more perfect understanding, praying
for the strength to resist all temptation.

(you cannot let anyone know
you have been dreaming of your mouth
on another woman’s soft belly)

In Japan you help a missionary family
with their struggling church.
The wife tells you God only called her
to marry a man, and it is enough.

(she never smiles when she laughs,
and her husband confesses on the train to Nagoya
he has never been more depressed)



You see how powerless your God is
in this country where no one gives a fuck about
White American Jesus. The hellfire street
sermons can’t get a rise out of stoic passerby.

(secretly you pray the Buddhists are right
and that you will be reborn
as anything besides a Baptist)

A girl your age comes to church
for the free English lessons
and leans against your shoulder
while playing clips on her flip phone.

(she stops by on her way to the summer festival
while you’re stuck inside folding gospel tracts
just to show you her pink and yellow yukata)

You go back to the States with
a thousand paper cranes she made for you,
her fingers folding hard creases in flower prints,
gold and silver foils, candy wrappers,

(flattening the tiny birds with her palms,
gently pulling their wings with her thumbs
and breathing life into their hollow bodies.)

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