Fundraising for Baptists

There’s a typo in the pamphlet: In the beginning there was the worm.

We’d gathered to sell what we could. I carried the case 

of water for frail Steven, then dropped it on my foot. 

The time is coming when all that is in your house shall be carried off to Babylon, 

I read, then took cowboy boots from the basement. 

How much to fix the air conditioner? How much for the lawn?

The spiders said there's more sodium in the canned stuff. 

We sold the canned stuff, the cowboy boots, the waters. 

Passerby paid for crosses. Complimented the purple tablecloth.

I’d picked the purple tablecloth. I’d laid the crosses out in order.

Cooing women. Fresh cooking. Their widows more numerous than 

the sand of the sea—Yellow moon at noon spying

on the titled clothes rack, a painting of red concentric circles, 

on me barefoot in the church yard frying drumsticks in a ten-gallon pot 

on a gas burner in the grass while the lilies lay dead 

even in July. The Lord laid upon him the guilt of us all. For five dollars 

a young man bought the pamphlet and read it sitting on the cooler 

with his wisdom shrunken and curious in his throat. 

Then he had one question. What became of the worm?