Darkly Devotions

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Lyric prose meditations that play with elements from evangelical Christianity, Buddhism, yoga, reiki, Tarot and “weird voodoo shit.”

~by Cindy Clem

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Opening Exercise: Make a batch of raisin cakes. Let them be your punishment and your grace. Eat, and ponder your iniquity.

Today’s passages:
Some people are attracted by looks.
Some people are attracted by money.
Some people are attracted by existential crisis.
~a friend of mine

I just fell into a manic depression
And I really wanna spend it with you.
~Styx

Then the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover [… ] just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.”
~Hosea 3:1

And thus begin the trials of Hosea the prophet, commanded by God to marry a harlot, Gomer, to illustrate to the Israelites both God’s wrath and his fidelity despite their a-whoring after other gods. God’s people are in crisis, and God, in his anguish and rage, spills out a ten-chapter God-rant. Hell hath no fury like God scorned. He belittles, curses, pleads, threatens, mourns, recites their list of wrongs, promises forgiveness, fantasizes about an idyllic future, and more. Can anyone relate?

Hosea: A Found Poem*

I.
I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel
You are not My people, and I will not be your God

Bring charges against your mother, bring charges, for she is not My wife!
I expose her, I make her like a wilderness and slay her with thirst

I will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her
I will allure her

I will destroy your mother
Even the fish of the sea will be taken

II.
My people ask counsel from their wooden idols
They burn incense under terebinths

They have begotten pagan children
A New Moon shall devour them
I will return till they acknowledge their offense.
They will seek my face; in their affliction they will diligently seek me

III.
I will be to Ephraim like a moth and to the house of Judah like rottenness

Gilead is defiled with blood
Robbers lie in wait, priests murder
Like an oven they are hot

Ephraim is a cake unturned
Ephraim is like a silly dove
Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh grain

Woe to them, for they have fled from me!

The calf of Samaria shall be broken
For the calf of Beth Aven, priests shriek
And it is not God; a workman made it

IV.
O Israel, you have loved for reward on every threshing floor

I found [you] like grapes in the wilderness,
I saw your fathers as the firstfruits on the fig tree in its first season

They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind
Tumult shall arise
A mother dashed in pieces upon her children

When Israel was a child I loved him. I taught Ephraim to walk.
I stooped and fed them

How can I give you up? How can I hand you over?

I will not execute the fierceness of my anger.
I am the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come with terror

V.
I will roar like a lion.
I will make you dwell in tents.

O Israel you are destroyed, but your help is from Me
I will be your King

Like a leopard by the road I will observe.
I will meet them like a bear deprived of cubs.
I will tear open their rib cage and there I will devour them

O Israel, return to the Lord your God
I will heal, I will love freely
I will be like the dew; he shall grow like the lily

Their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child ripped open

I am like a green cypress tree; your fruit is found in Me

~

[Closing thought: Do raisins in cake bring to mind the plump bodies of dead flies? Eat, and ponder your iniquity.]

* I didn’t just find it. I spent a lot of time looking for exactly the right phrases, arranging them aesthetically, and artfully indenting, damn it. I cordoned phrases into units that end on random yet possibly deeply rational images that make you wonder if you’re missing something.

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Cindy Clem received her MFA in poetry in 2005 and has been writing non-fiction ever since. Her poems and essays have appeared (magically!) in Mid-American Review, The Normal School, Prairie Schooner, Memoir (and), Superstition Review, The Interrobang, Spittoon, and Michigan Quarterly Review (forthcoming).