Chase Strawser

Tatoos

I see the stamp of You in me and everything

I know I’ll be returned to You one day but for now

it feels like I’m a love letter lost in the wind

Everyone sees something different

in this face like a wax seal

others in their cold expressions try to steal

until every smile and smirk is like an arrow

in search of a heart that used to be on my sleeve

but now it is with You for safe keeping

They don’t see your writing on the scroll of my soul

They don’t see that the writing on theirs is the same

They don’t hear the wind shout Your truths

until its voice is a hoarse roar

and the sky weeps at our indifference

pulling its hair out in electric tufts

They don’t see how many of these pages

are tear stained where many sank in them

before they got to the part where

salvation came

They don’t see how the shadow of the first man

is an ink blot with many terrors spreading

in wrong directions and how a single dab

of red corrected that error

They don’t see where we couldn’t speak

You spoke for us

took all the jabs for us that we deserved

so we could have the colorful tattoos

that make us more like You

And on your body, if one looks closer

one can see the story as it is meant to be told

and where there is bare skin

there is a love letter trying to bring

all the other lost letters home

Habakkuk sonnet

Is there such thing as murky omniscience?

Meteoric justice to engulf some,

While others endure mere singed skin?

Where have you gone, Indivisible One?

To eyes that wax and wane, statutes fluctuate,

But glimmers on the sea cannot sink ships.

These tides to counterfeit moons do not obey;

Drown contending with your moral reflection.

One would think my watch-post and I one;

Impaled where your pen once stented my heart.

I would rather this tower should crumble,

Than be buoyant with self-appointed mortar.

Buildings cannot outgrow their foundation;

Cloud-made castles thirst for tears not their own.

Harvest organs from unearthed constellations,

‘Til dead dance above; we glitter below.

Splinters in your fingers start to flourish,

Until you burn a person for firewood.

Can you outrun the ground that nourishes?

What you cut down will bind you in its book.

Break our bones to make Your hope their marrow.

May throats cut with hunger relearn to sing.

Remnants of vultures revive to sparrows.

I prefer Your drought to their mirage spring.

Don’t squander this life an aimless wraith;

Harvest or hardship, righteous live by faith.

Exodus Sonnet

What do you see, looking towards the water?

Most will see only reflected surmise

Behold, the blood-caked mask of mine falters

Cracked, brick by brick, to a child’s smile

Branches burn in impervious songbirds

One, holds a twig that writhes in the right light

Two, makes rivers blush with early sunset

Three, makes broken beaks sing like mountain peaks

Frogs and flies, enchanted, dance and play

Locusts leave tiny, green, handkerchief leaves

Phantom lanterns vanish to hungry graves

Making even His shade too bright to see

Every ignored tear returns in hailstone

When they melt, hardened hearts sprout skeletons

Like the dirt throwing lightning of its own

Still, they say their dead are only sleeping

Door frame flames inextinguishable now

They leave the sinking ship and its ghost crew

Safe in gilded waves, they sing where guilty drown

Music found where joy and fear rendezvous

Will you sing with us, or hoard your gold untold?

Trade it for this song and never grow old.

Chase Strawser is a writer from Columbus, Ohio. After earning a BA in English at Muskingum University and being the 2015 featured writer in their literary magazine First Circle, Chase published as a freelance reporter. Chase received his MAEd from Mount Vernon Nazarene University in 2021 to help future writers.