by Kevin Brown

We have forsaken the fallow
fiftieth year, the seventh
sabbath, the jubilee
of justice, displacing orphans
and widows
for Wal-Marts, creating factory

farms where gleaning is given
over to the bottom line, threshers mow
men, women,
and wheat indiscriminately,
looking to create a tomato
as large as our hearts

used to be.
We go sweatshopping
for clothes and tchotchkes,
changing fashions as frequently
as channels, pushing the broken

under bridges, to other countries,
while our prophets preach
prohibitions and hate instead
of lifting up love, forgetting a poor man

will sit on the right hand
and judge us all.

*

Kevin Brown is an Associate Professor of English at Lee University and an MFA student at Murray State University. He has one book of poetry, Exit Lines (2009), and two chapbooks, Abecedarium (2011) and Holy Days: Poems (Winner of Split Oak Press Chapbook Contest 2012). He also has a forthcoming memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again (2012). His poems have been published in or are forthcoming from The New York Quarterly, REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, Folio, Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review, Stickman Review, Atlanta Review, and Palimpsest, among others.