Issue #30.3 Three Poems by Bill Lavender
Photo by Louis Maistros
from: city of god, poems based on a distracted* reading of a dubious translation** of De civitate Dei contra paganos, commonly known in English as The City of God by Saint Augustine of Hippo.
*by life and media in the USA, beginning January 6, 2021, the day of the Trump insurrection, ending January 6, 2025, the day of his election certification.
**Marcus Dods editor/translator, 1872 edition, Gutenberg Ebook #45304.
These poems are excerpted from the complete responses to the Augustine text, 400 some odd pieces, which will be released by MadHat Press in 2026.
20.17
our saint finds it “excessively barefaced” (inpudentiae nimiae) to read the apocalypse literally, like our own impudent oil execs buying up wind leases just so they can lie fallow while it rains fire, ‘climate talks’ in nice hotels yield barefaced good wishes, wheat crops cook in the ground & trump’s barefaced mugshot hits every front page, and the worst is yet to come
20.27
“such a judgment as has never before been,” a vision augustine shares with clarence thomas who lies awake at night itching to sink his pen into anything that smacks of ‘right to privacy’ (though just try to sneak a camera on one of those yachts) for it is just those privy moments we need to be punished for
20.28
& regardless of all the cruelly inequitable sentences handed down in the course of history by judges both human and divine showering honor glory wealth and offspring upon liars thieves and murderers and poverty prison and sorrow without bound upon the most saintly and selfless among us the “last” judgment shall be the perfect pairing of every mortal (living or not) with the just punishment and/or eternally blessed sensual massage everything so equitable there will be no need to ever judge anything again
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Bill Lavender is a poet, novelist, musician, carpenter and publisher living in New Orleans. His twelfth book of poetry and magnum opus, city of god, appears from MadHat Press in 2026. My ID was published by BlazeVOX in October, 2019. His novel trilogy, Three Letters, (comprised of Q, Little A, and The Private I) was released in 2021 by Spuyten Duyvil. His verse memoir, Memory Wing, was published by Black Widow in 2011. Essays, fiction, poetry and other ephemera appear regularly in Xavier Review, Fell Swoop, Southern Review, Jacket2 and other print and online journals.
Bill is the founder of Lavender Ink/Diálogos and co-founder of the New Orleans Poetry Festival.
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