The Doubters’ Bench

I was not the only one
to open her eyes
when our reverend prayed

for the souls
on the doubters’ bench.
I should not speak

for the others:
maybe they always prayed
like that, awake

and rubbernecking. Maybe
I craned alone
to see which pew

was reserved for the souls—
hot water bottles,
raisined balloons—

filled with reservations.
Why I imagined skeptics’ souls
that way, without

their pudgy armor, gracing
church naked, not
wearing round shoulders,

I don’t know.
As if we were not all bowed
around something.

As if we were not each intent
on the wedges of bench
between our knees. I should not

speak for the others.
I should say: Intent on the bench
between my knees,

having calculated whom
the sanctuary lights
would impale falling, I felt

safer. I felt a familiar plum,
warm as a blood clot,
blush inside my skin suit.

Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, as well as other journals and magazines. In addition, she is the co-editor of book reviews for Plume; her own reviews have been published there and in The Los Angeles Review of Books.