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.