“The Blind Leading the Blind,” tempera on canvas, by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1568.
How could I not believe in God
when He loves basketball
this much? Post-win, the coach
first praises Him: We serve
an unbelievable God. I consider faith.
The divinely anointed. But belief
is hard when a forced famine takes
shape, rising parabola like the arc
of a logo three, while the word genocide
triggers a blacklist only the laid bare
truth could earn. When the options
are the Final Four or what
The New York Times insists
we call war—and all of humanity’s
fate rests in your hands—who
wouldn’t be tempted by courtside?
Uncommon favor, we never doubted
for a moment, walk by faith. I want
a God who shows up where
He is most needed. Or
at all. Boiled weeds. Small
fingers pick through animal
feed. I once thought God
was all-powerful, a bearded
White man. Now I’m convinced:
He’s too much like me. Jumbled
priorities, distracted, unwashed
bowls piling up in the sink.
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian American poet and the author of “Fractures,” winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Winner of the International Book Award, Gómez has been published in The Nation, New England Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, The Sunday Times, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. Carlos is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
