Jesus said:          Suffer
the children, forbid
them not from me.
Such is my father’s
kingdom, heaven:
Their names are legion
where they lay
tunneled beneath our borders.
Raise
             the tattered knuckles
of their corpses, Roman play
things, marbles and jacks
cast upon the suffering
of children, whose unnamed legion
will separate our bones, dissolve
our joints, on resurrection day.

This article appears in November 26 2018.

Joshua Wall has published work in First Things, Frontier Poetry and Jewish Fiction .net. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where he teaches.