11/8/16
by Joe Sacksteder
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God called to our fathers,
Take your children, the ones whom you love,
and offer them as burnt sacrifices.
We walked with our fathers to the mountain,
performed the chores they set us
—fetched wood, built an altar—
though we’d guessed the reason
for our fathers’ silence before we caught
the glint of silver.
God campaigning elsewhere, his messenger called out,
Do not reach your hand against your children,
for I know now that you fear God.
Hearing wrong, fearing wrong
—or just angry at the wasted day—
our fathers killed us anyway.
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Soon after the 2016 election, my PhD exam reading list sent me to the Rare Books Department at the University of Utah's Marriott Library to leaf white-gloved through the Book of Genesis. My mentor Melanie Rae Thon had suggested it, the Robert Alter translation. I'd held the Bible in great esteem as a young person but was feeling at a low point of charity toward a text that so many voting Americans were warping and being warped by. This poem, always a grim favorite of mine, popped into my head fully formed, a kind of revenge.
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JOE SACKSTEDER is the author of the short story collection Make/Shift (Sarabande Books), the novel Driftless Quintet (Schaffner Press), and an album of audio collages Fugitive Traces (Punctum Books). His experimental horror novel, Hack House, is forthcoming from Astrophil Press. www.joesacksteder.com