NewPoetry

A. J. Levin

Now everybody thinks they’re Jesus
mathematically impossible, one can be three
but three is never eight billion

at the age of nine at summer camp
a kid named Roger told futures
from the patterns in our sweatpants

still the best -mancy I’ve met,
thirty minutes of floor hockey
then about as much fortunetelling

he also taught us to swear in
Hungarian, the more useful of
the Two Sacred Knowledges

my turn: he saw I would not be Jesus
but the Father, I cursed Myself deeply for it
maybe if I just had brought different pants

then we all sang “Islands in the Stream”