steam roils and glows like fire over the pots and pans in the late-afternoon kitchen.

religion on a bus

A young man (1) and a middle aged man in a wheelchair (2) are on a bus. The middle aged man has a light wide-brimmed hat on his head, the young man has wide baggy pants and a bag strapped over his shoulder.

1: “You go to church?”

2: “Excuse me?”

1: “I said, you go to church?”

2: “Yes I go to church.”

1: “What church you go to?”

2: “I don’t belong to any particular church, if that’s what you mean.”

1: “Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

2: “Well, I’m still shopping around, trying to find something that’s right for me. I’m dealing with this (gestures down at his wheelchair) and the fact that my wife left me after I got hurt.”

1: “You ever heard of (blank) Church? That’s down by fourth and K. They’d fix that right up there. People get healed all the time.”

2: “Is that right.”

1: “Uh huh, seen it with my own two eyes. Folk on the verge of dying, preacher lays his hands on them and they’re cured. Folk can’t stand, preacher shakes the devil out of them.”

2: “I guess maybe that works for some people.

1: “A person’s just gotta have faith. Doesn’t have to happen right away. Our neighbor, she’s been sick in bed for three years. Don’t move or stand up. But she tells everyone, ‘I’m gonna be cured,’ and we all believe her. Course, we don’t know when she’ll be cured. Could be tomorrow, could be another three years from now, could be ten. But we know she’s gonna be cured, cause she said it.”

2: “I believe God can cure anything, but that doesn’t mean God cures everyone. Otherwise no one would ever get sick or die.”

1: “God says, all ye who believe, you shall be healed.”

2: “Where does God say that?”

1: “It’s in the Bible.”

2: “Now, that’s just not true.”

1: (moves to pull something out from his bag) “Well I got it right here, I can show you.”

2: “Nevermind.”

1: “All ye who believe, you shall be healed. That’s God’s own truth. That means all true believers shall be healed.”

2: “I don’t think I’m in this wheelchair because of a lack of faith. And for you to say that is frankly offensive.”

1: “I wasn’t saying that.”

2: (falters) “That’s what you were implying.”

1: “No, hey, well, why did I say the story about our neighbor and whatnot? All I’m saying is, don’t you be accepting this (gestures at his wheelchair). Hear me? We’re all where we are for a reason, so you just gotta ask yourself, Lord, why am I here? What have I done?”

2: (sourly) “My stops coming up.” (leans back to pull the cord. The two are silent as the bus slowly comes to a whining halt.)

1: “What was your name, sir?”

2: “Chris. And yours?”

1: “I’m Harold. You have a nice day, Chris. Think about what I said.”

2: “Nice talking to you.”

"Dude, I'd be awesome at Ramadan. I didn't eat or drink anything all day except some Sour Patch Kids." --Sai, video game junkie, overall lazy butt.

I saw a dying bee on the sidewalk

it couldn’t fly and it was limping in circles and figure eights

I remembered how bees communicate in dance

And I wondered if behind the bee’s staggering walk

was a kind of stumbling poetry, some coherent message:

a plea for help, a final wish, a prayer to God

a hasty autobiography written in symbols on the pavement.

Or perhaps the bee had already succumbed to the throes of death

And was babbling such nonsense that

even native speakers of its own kind

would see only madness in these cryptic ambulations

and they would shake their heads, and turn away

with a pained look in their prismatic eyes

because those iridescent wings shone no less bright

for all that they twitched uselessly at its back.

--on campus at UC Riverside

yesterday I saw the sunrise. It was drizzling in the distance and hazy cones of precipitation were hanging from the clouds so the light refracted into lengths of rainbow that spanned the hills behind the city. A hawk was still hunting in the old burned down orange groves along the wash beside the hills and he swooped from telephone pole to telephone pole with high keening cries. That was my morning.