Todd Heldt
Prayer on the Bob Jones University Campus
Stumbling drunk between the buildings
With bisexual girlfriend and gay best friend,
we are three shades of Sodom. Our show
runs late, and we need coffee and sugar
and time to sober up for the all-day drive
to Atlanta. The Krispy Kreme Donuts
is not open yet. When I thought of hell
when I was young, it was for very bad people
and me. Stuck in Bible Country for at least
a few hours, I catch myself starting to pray
for the first time in years, my prayer that
no one will notice I’m here. I don’t know
whose side I’m on anymore, but if there’s a hell,
it’s probably a lot like this, and if there’s a God
it obviously can’t keep us straight either.
Todd Heldt is the author of Card Tricks for the Starving (Ghost Road Press, 2009). His work has appeared in 2AM Muse, Blast Furnace, Chiron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Fear of Monkeys, Gyroscope Review, Modern Poetry Quarterly, and many other journals. Heldt is a librarian in Chicago.
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