Kimberly Wolf

@kimberlywolf.bsky.social

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Southern poet. Author of How the Frogs Gets Married (Bullshit Lit, July 2023). www.kimberlywolfpoet.com

KIMBERLY WOLF HOW TO GET AN ATHEIST TO PRAY Divinity's been shot in the head point blank and the casket at its funeral is child-sized. No one on God's green earth attends the service but plenty of people take selfies at the wake while a drone ignites a temple ignites a school ignites a home. To get an atheist to pray you have to suck all the holy out of the atmosphere bring them to their knees make them desperate to breathe.
Kimberly Wolf MARY MAGDALENE IN THE WILDERNESS They say he drove demons out of me. Laid hands on my haunted body until I wept tears that I used to wash his feet. It is true that I loved him. What else are you supposed to do when a man comes spewing kindness down the crowded streets, offers you heaven on the one condition that you devote yourself to him entirely. Forever. Yes, I did cry when they killed him. I hid my smile beneath my sleeve. That was before he had to go and resurrect himself, remind me there is no escape from his ruthless mercy. Now he lives in the sky, his terrible love collecting clouds to keep the sun from reaching my shoulders. Thirty years I've been out here, trying to be alone. I know it's not possible, but sometimes it gets so quiet, I forget about his hands. A man goes out to the desert to hallucinate the devil's temptations for a few weeks and gets called a god. What does that make me?
A poem by Bleah Patterson: A poem in which I am one of the worms wriggling around my grandmother's dead body she's still warm, you wouldn't believe it but of course she's still warm, that spot on her stomach, where I at fifteen still nestled between her lush arms holding the the bouquet of me kissing the crown of my sweat damp head still I was surprised crawled through her once jolly belly, wriggled through the button of it up into her booming diaphragm stunned by the warmth of her all of the years since I told a room full of her favorite and least favorite people and said of her field of needy cows, of women yes, I still dream of her imagined as literal cows, who need her, because god said so and I wonder if it's my job to feed them now, the cows, remembering that I don't even like cows and as I swing on the monkey bars of her ribcage back and forth back and forth still wonder if she'd be mad that I'm dancing on her grave or just glad that after all of these years she's still feeding me.
A selfie of the author of this post in a dimly lit room. Their hair has a lot of volume!!!! Wow!!!!
An orange cat laying very flat on top of the headboard of a bed, in front of an open window. He is looking down at the person taking the picture.
A selfie of the author of this post. They are wearing a white T-shirt that says MJ LENDERMAN AND THE WIND in red letters. They’re wearing gold rimmed glasses and standing in front of a bookshelf.
A loaf of homemade bread on a plate in front of a window.
A small poem by Kimberly Wolf: The sum of my parts two eyes in a skull fingers that twitch and tremble one foot that aches a heart that has no use for metaphors a brain that houses the whole shebang and a belief that slips through the cracks like a prisoner breaking out of his cell
A black cat sleeping in the sunlight in a propped up position.