The Mad Poet of the Year blog posts share the poetry of a long-time Mad Poet. This year-long appointment provides readers with a deep dive of the writer’s work and thoughts on poetry. We are thrilled to have R. G. Evans serve as the Mad Poet of the Year for 2022.
FALLOUT
by R.G. Evans
Beside the crucifix in the Catholic school lunchroom
hung a black and yellow fallout shelter sign.
We’d cross ourselves for Grace, but instead of praying
I’d think of fallout, imagine it as snow-like flakes,
gray and silent, floating down to cover and burn
everything they touched. Born too late for air raid drills,
we had no rituals to teach us how to fear the atom
like the ones that showed us how to fear our Lord.
Nuns taught us geometry and about the triune God,
but I studied the yellow trinity of triangles
inside that priestblack disk. One for the Father,
one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost
who moved across creation as a dove, a breath--
or as tongues of flame that descended upon the Apostles
at Pentecost. Christ’s isosceles wounds watched over us
as we ate lunch amid the mysteries of our faith,
sheltered from any fire that might fall out of the sky.
This poem, originally published by Teresa Mei Chuc in Shabda Press’s powerful anthology Nuclear Impact, felt like a nostalgia piece when I wrote it (“we had no rituals to teach us how to fear the atom”)—I wish it still did.
R.G. Evans’s books include Overtipping the Ferryman (Aldrich Poetry Press Prize), The Holy Both, and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His original songs were featured in the poetry documentaries All That Lies Between Us and Unburying Malcolm Miller, and his collection of original songs, Sweet Old Life, is available on most streaming platforms. Evans teaches creative writing at Rowan University. Website: www.rgevanswriter.com