By Jeff Tigchelaar

Featured Art: Christ Blessing by Martin Schongauer

How am I?
Blessed. Blessed. I am
just blessed. God is good. Not afraid
to brag on God. Brag all day
on Big Man. My fiancée
just graduated. Junior college right across the street.
Four point O. See? God. He’s good. I’m looking
for work. The other day who do
I happen to meet
but the owner of Huntington Steel.
If that’s not God right there.
You can’t tell me that’s not a God Thing.
He’s workin’ it. Every day. Everywhere. I’m going
to Israel, by the way. Jerusalem. Judah. Judah, you know,
was Jacob’s fourth son. Now
Moses, though—God didn’t let just anybody
bury Moses. Dude was holy. An angel
had to put old Moses in the ground. Archangel Michael.
Jude 9. Look it up. Good Book.
Moses was so holy. Up there
two weeks with God on that mountain.
Gettin’ those Commandments. No Moses, no tablets.
Moses got blessed like nobody’s business.
Love me some Ten Commandments, though.
Love me some Shalt Nots and Covets. Don’t Covets.
God bless Moses. I’m just
blessed to be able to tell you about Moses. Share that
Word with you today. The man was like God’s Number Three.
Maybe Two. Right behind Jesus. Blessed as hell.
I’m about to be blessed with that steel job, though.
Think how hard Moses would work that. Mr. Bulrushes.
Mr. Burning Bush. Mr. Hold Up That Rod,
Throw Down That Staff . . . but now he’s dead and can’t
so I’m the man. Work my ass off get that good reward.

You know I make music, too, right?
My own CD. Shit:
It ought to be Top 40.
People don’t know. People don’t get
hip-hop. But I know:
I’d be big in Jerusalem.
Just like Big Man. I’d lay down
some Law up there. Rain down that heaven-bread
on the people of the Holy Land.

I got to get there first, though.
Part those waters. You know.

Here. Tell you what.
Check out my CD. I’ll give you this copy
for just twelve bucks.

---

Jeff Tigchelaar’s poems have appeared in Kestrel, West Wind Review, The Offending Adam, Heavy Feather Review, Pleiades, LIT, The Laurel Review, Cut- Bank, decomP, The Wallace Stevens Journal, and Fugue, and in anthologies including Verse Daily and Best New Poets. His collection Certain Streets at an Uncertain Hour (Woodley Press) won the Kansas Authors Club’s 2016 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Tigchelaar lives in Huntington, West Virginia.