A Literary Magazine in Support of the Jewish Community
Viewmaster Slide, Noah and the Ark
Long ago, people grew so wicked that God was very sad.
The ark must be as large as the earth to hold
what has become extinct: the Beautiful Armadillo,
Goff’s Pocket Gopher, the Dire Wolf.
Though it hasn’t rained in months,
the sea levels will rise. You will refuse
to wake up in the morning, preferring to ignore
the predictions, the denials of politicians.
Anyway, it’s always the end of the world for someone.
Today, you’ve decided, is yours.
But how can the Lord regret what he has made?
You, with your belly full of music, your somber eyes,
the way the hummingbird returns with the summer’s heat—
and how today, the missing rhinoceros was found
after years of absence.
We can’t stop what is about to happen,
but we can refuse to forget,
take you along into the sun as it swallows us.
—for Ben Miranda
Viewmaster Slide, Noah and the Ark II
As long as the earth endures, / seedtime and harvest, / cold and heat,
summer and winter, / day and night / will never cease.
—Genesis 8:22
There wasn’t room in the ark for all the animals of the world so the ark
must have been bigger on the inside than out like the time machine
space craft made from a British police box where I’d travel with my friends
to planets that needed heroes and we could be those heroes, not
the trampled and oppressed, the misunderstood. The un-
beautiful.
It doesn’t matter that the rainbow existed before
the disembarkment that there must have been more than one
righteous person in the whole world
that Noah got drunk later and lay
uncovered in his tent and died like everyone else.
War and rumors of war, rape, pillage, and murder and the president
who’d touch the girl without her permission and never apologize.
The Lord has promised that day and night will never cease: So endure.
Walk through the valley. Go to therapy and take your pills.
Drink too many beers and learn to forget.
Marci Rae Johnson
Marci Rae Johnson is a freelance editor and writer. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Image, Moon City Review, Main Street Rag, The MacGuffin, Rhino, The Louisville Review, and 32 Poems, among others. Her most recent book, Basic Disaster Supplies Kit, was published by Steel Toe Books.
