{"id":1663,"date":"2012-07-18T18:12:27","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T18:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/?page_id=1663"},"modified":"2012-07-19T02:42:11","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T02:42:11","slug":"jan-steckel-712","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/archives\/jan-steckel-712\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan Steckel, 7\/12"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span id=\"yui_3_2_0_21_1342630864829648\">The Elect Decline<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Lord pass over me.<\/div>\n<div>God, pass over me.<\/div>\n<div>Don\u2019t make me hold someone else\u2019s<\/div>\n<div>dying child in my arms.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Don\u2019t make me clasp the hands<\/div>\n<div>of women giving birth,<\/div>\n<div>their eyes the eyes of horses<\/div>\n<div>trapped in burning stables.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Don\u2019t choose me, Lord.<\/div>\n<div>I don\u2019t want to be Chosen.<\/div>\n<div>I just want to be happy.<\/div>\n<div>I don\u2019t need to be Yours.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Predictable ragged heartbreak:<\/div>\n<div>icebergs of bills, disability,<\/div>\n<div>belly fat, signals of mortality&#8211;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Lord, pass over me.<\/div>\n<div>Let this pass from me.<\/div>\n<div>I just want to hold someone else\u2019s<\/div>\n<div>hiccupping baby in my arms.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8230;<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8230;<\/span><\/div>\n<div><strong>Frog Soup<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8230;<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8230;<\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Marriage drops you like<\/div>\n<div>a frog into a pot of cool water.<\/div>\n<div>At first you feel a proprietary glow<\/div>\n<div>about your spouse\u2019s endearing eccentricities.<\/div>\n<div>Over the years, the glow becomes a fire.<\/div>\n<div>You start to squirm a bit.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>You don\u2019t jump out of the pot,<\/div>\n<div>because the incremental changes are small.<\/div>\n<div>Each hard word raises the temperature,<\/div>\n<div>each small cruelty, each callous act<\/div>\n<div>makes the broth hotter.<\/div>\n<div>Nothing is forgotten.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>If you\u2019re Jewish, like me,<\/div>\n<div>nothing is forgiven, either.<\/div>\n<div>When you finally realize<\/div>\n<div>you\u2019re being boiled alive,<\/div>\n<div>it\u2019s too late.<\/div>\n<div>You\u2019re frog soup.<\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8230;<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">&#8230;<\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Jan Steckel is a retired pediatrician, a bisexual and disability rights activist, and a poet and writer. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared in\u00a0<em>Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Bi Women, Red Rock Review<\/em>, and elsewhere. Her chapbook\u00a0<em>The Underwater Hospital<\/em>\u00a0(Zeitgeist Press, 2006) won a Rainbow Award for lesbian and bisexual poetry. Her\u00a0<em>Mixing Tracks\u00a0<\/em>(Gertrude Press, 2009) won the Gertrude Press fiction chapbook award. Her first full-length poetry book,\u00a0<em>The Horizontal Poet<\/em>, is just out from Zeitgeist Press. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband Hew Wolff.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Elect Decline Lord pass over me. God, pass over me. Don\u2019t make me hold someone else\u2019s dying child in my arms. Don\u2019t make me clasp the hands of women giving birth, their eyes the eyes of horses trapped in burning stables. Don\u2019t choose me, Lord. I don\u2019t want to be Chosen. I just want [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":934,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1663","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Jan Steckel, 7\/12 - Full Of Crow: Poetry (Archives)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fullofcrow.com\/poetry\/archives\/jan-steckel-712\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jan Steckel, 7\/12 - Full Of Crow: Poetry (Archives)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Elect Decline Lord pass over me. God, pass over me. 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