Two Poems by Theric Jepson

Doline

The realtor failed to mention the spiritual sinkhole beneath our home before we signed here and here and there and once more on this one to trade one third of our income these next thirty years for a home surrounded by the dying and the absent. Someday we’ll no longer be the youngest couple on this street and the land shall flow with milk and honey and, more to the point, wifi, letting evil find easier passage through our lives rather than taking up residence a thousand feet from our front door, signaling the lost and the angry of our wired world that here is the hell from which thy demons came.

El Niño

And there arose false messiahs shewing
forth great signs and wonders insomuch
that they deceived even the very elect….

Matthew 24:24

March 2016

A pair of atmospheric rivers merging on the Bay
brought cries of allelujah to our parched lips.
Our Savior was a showy savior, blowing rain
across the Bay Bridge—for our Lord was in the wind
(better the wind than an earthquake!)
making the same patterns any god makes
when he pounds mud with his fist. He dashed water
into the bridge’s towers making surfable waves
rebound, blowing our Mazda5 to the edge of its lane.

Dams are spilling by morning,
but the Central Valley floor
has sunk a hundred feet since Chinatown,
and California is not a balloon.

We can’t repay to a shuttered bank
no matter the nostalgia
for our flirty teller’s perfume.

(Her name was Betty
and her hair was manzanita.)

Theric Jepson’s poetry has appeared in a number of publications, most of which have never claimed regret for their decision. His chapbook After Chadwick was released in 2015. If you wish to visit him online, alas, thmazing.com is currently crippled by corrupted code, but googling thmazing and seeing what comes up is probably more fun anyway.