My Mother Tells Me Jesus Saves While Sipping Lemonade
I tell her I don’t know him.
I tell her that I think I saw Jesus at the coffee shop in town once, throwing a fit about oat milk. You know the one that sells the seven dollar coffees down the street from Starbucks?
Piling his chestnut waves in a bun; stomping around in his lime green crocs with little foam crosses in them—pronouncing espresso as expresso, stuffing his crumpled ones back in his creased leather wallet.
Jesus is that friend that everyone can’t stop talking about. That everyone says looks like a trust fund Jason Momoa. Argues that Charles Bukowski was a feminist. He knows a guy that knows a guy who can get you fucked up six ways till Sunday.
He brings wine to a kegger. He bums cigarettes. It’d be cool if you go see his band. Swears he’s too big for a condom; says he can’t feel a damn thing when wearing one. Lets you clean up in the bathroom, but ran out of toilet paper, and the mirror is stippled in caked toothpaste spit.
Jesus forgets to call you back for six weeks, but texts at 2:00 am wondering where you’ve been,
and leaves you on read.
Laura Jean Henebry is a creative writer working on her first collection of poetry. She can be found writing in the early hours of the morning with a cup of hot tea and discarded clementine peels piled next to her. When not writing, she is roasting marshmallows around a campfire in the Adirondacks, or dancing in her living room to her records. She resides with her two dogs and graphic designer partner nestled between the Adirondack and Catskill mountains of Upstate, NY.
This poem was an Honorable Mention in the 2022 HVWG Poetry Contest.
