Rebecca Foust is the author of several poetry collections, including You Are Leaving the American Sector: Love Poems (Blue Light Press 2026), Only, and The Unexploded Ordnance Bin. Her honors include the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry and the National Indie Excellence Award for Poetry. She divides her time between Northern California and Minnesota.

Photograph by William Harvey.

Divine Apparitions

by Rebecca Foust

I thought I saw Jesus in a jizz stain,
his hippie beard and soft brown eyes, then again
in the Cheez Whiz and, last, in the long tear
in the screen where Dad kicked it in. Young,
I yearned to be Catholic, and Jesus seemed nice,
a kid-brother-like gull who of course would fall
for the line that dying in agony saves the world.

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