Imagine the Crucifixion Itself

I don’t want to look.
Besides, why think of

just one death when
this morning 300 in Cairo—

for example.

Besides,

I need to be able
to turn to the class tomorrow

and say Good Morning,
Good Morning

—Elizabeth Poreba

This poem was written in response to the daily readings from Meeting Christ in Prayer.

Elizabeth Poreba is a retired New York City high-school English teacher. She has published two collections of poems, Vexed and Self Help: A Guide for the Retiring, and two chapbooks, The Family Profile and New Lebanon. The eighth line of this poem is from Elizabeth Willis’s poem, “And What My Species Did.” “Ruin from the air” is a reference to the book by the same name, written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts.