Kathi Wolfe

RITA'S PRAYER*

If You have the whole world in Your hands,
where is there room for me?
If I should sleep and die before I wake,

just burn my shoes, the orthopedic pumps.
My gimpy feet will tap and bop in heaven
where amputees fox trot on Your dance floor.

Just once, may Your blood sugar be so low,
that You break into a sweat, get clammy,
feel nauseous, forget Your Holy name,

and that after You've had quarts of orange juice
poured down Your throat, You don't know
where You are or were going,

until You remember: It's Easter Sunday
and you were in the Pontiac, driving the kids,
wearing their new outfits, to church to pray.

*"Rita's Prayer" will appear in The Green Light forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Kathi Wolfe was a finalist in the 2007 Pudding House Chapbook competition and her chapbook, Helen Takes The Stage: The Helen Keller Poems was subsequently published by Pudding House. Wolfe's next book The Green Light (Finishing Line Press) will be released in the summer of 2013. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Not Just Air, Wordgathering, Breath & Shadow and other publications. Wolfe has received a Puffin Foundation grant and been awarded poetry residencies by Vermont Studio Center.