POEM: Vocational

Vocational is a micro-narrative that explores the depth of memory particularly through the lens of religion. This poem hopes to have achieved that religion and the spiritual life permeates every choice and is able to be arrived back to after a lapse, while also grappling with the middle. "Vocational" is transitional. The poem meditates on fragility and frailty, and the longing for something greater than one's self. The poem does not try to shy away from the aspects of religion, or the spiritual life, that are negative or tend to drive away those who grew up in the church, but sit with the results.

Vocational
by Theodore Heil

Meditating in the rumble,
in the belly of a whale, I construct
an economy of plain sorrows.

They say “it takes a decade”
—to prove you’re good
at anything, that you’re in it

for the long haul, and how many
people live through that? My father
became a Deacon and baptized

every baby born in the church.
This girl I knew in high school
got married for poking

a hole in a condom. Another is
an aristocrat, married above her station.
Still another became a teacher and me,

I write like a once-in-a-while
thunderbolt. And we had said That’s it
and left with our diplomas stashed

down the fronts of our pants
like we used to do shoplifting
Sundays at Walmart.

I look up marriage certificates
online and say my vows backwards.
I look up how to get ordained.

I look up graveyards and seminaries.
I look up into the mirror nailed
slightly higher than eye-level

in the corner of my room,
like the altar my father built
in his empty yellow home.

I dent precious things,
I stuff them up my nose like
tissue paper, like a gift wrapped

birthday present rustling
in me like the conductor
announces the arrival
of the next station.