October, Bloody-Lipped, Having Received the Essential Calling as Prophet at the Skate Rink

The call comes when the lights flicker off
& the disco balls switch on. You feel it
in your ankles first, a shaking across your unsteady bones.
God’s voice– or maybe an angel’s– says
Tell the people but the people are busy,
spinning & twisting to a beat overplaying
the Lord's seraphim & all their trumpets.
Couldn't you wait? All in God's time, but God
apparently didn't account for how bad you want (& want & want).
All in God's time, of course, but can’t God
wait until the song is over? Doesn’t he know
the fire in your skidding heels, the calloused
balls of your feet? The way your arms swing
when you give the all of yourself to the momentum
of the floor, catching up to, swerving past a flash of sharpened grace– a smile
you’re just dying to cut yourself on? Doesn’t
He know?

R.E. Campion

R.E. Campion (he/him) is a poet, writer, and tea enthusiast currently studying for his Masters' degree in Library Sciences. He is the founder and former editor of the yearly published University of Maryland Terpoets Anthology as well as the winner of the 2024 Sadat Poetry for Justice and Peace Award and the 2022 Amaranth Staff Pick of Poetry Award. He has previously been published in Amaranth Journal of the Arts, Stylus Literary Journal, Persephone LIterary Magazine and Silly Goose Press. He believes he holds the world record for the most times a human being has watched Wes Anderson's 2012 film "Moonrise Kingdom."

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