sonnet from “I Am Not Job” heroic crown

Why won't God amble in plainclothes among us
like the church that once lived as a car dealership?
The lot sprawls from the turret where the logo
used to lord over rows of vehicles and salespeople

unlike another church wedged between retailers
in a strip mall, the church that dons a red roof
of its past as a Pizza Hut, the church that swells
the walls of someone’s basement or a school gym.

Holy but not ornate in a way that startles familiarity
—finding God when I don’t expect to find God
until I Google why the building facade says Jubilee
instead of Chrysler. The faith to sew seeds in ruin:

is this where miracles shed their brick and mortar?
Lord, don't tell me the scale of my unknowing.

Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, assistant director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program, and a poetry editor for Salamander. He is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival and Claim Tickets for Stolen People, selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal's 2020 Charles B. Wheeler Prize. Quintin's other awards and accolades include a Pushcart Prize, a BCALA Literary Award honor, a Mass Cultural Council grant, the 2019 Atlantis Award from the Poet's Billow, and Best of the Net nominations.