The Phrase Honest to God Has Always Confused Me, Why by Andrew Hemmert
"And what was the point of all that gold just to fill the ark with dust?"
The Phrase Honest to God Has Always Confused Me, Why
be honest with God, he who presumably already knows? Better to be honest with your postal worker or cashier— someone who can't call your bluff and therefore the honesty means something. Honest to Sarah who scans my shopper's card. Honest to Joe who delivers my bills, which is another accountability. Yesterday the three half-wild mutts that always get loose got loose, ran havoc through the neighborhood, chased the mail truck down the cul-de-sac like archeologists after the ark. I didn't remember God giving Moses specific measurements for building it, but he did. And what was the point of all that gold just to fill the ark with dust? Honest to God I can only imagine I would have been one of those at the foot of the mountain, such little faith—worshipping the calf, then drinking its ashes.
Read our interview with Poet of the Week, Andrew Hemmert, in which he discusses failure as the engine for change, the idea of God’s voice, and writing about the sublime through the mundane. About this, he says:
“I don’t think there’s a difference between the mundane and the metaphysical. There’s no seam in my poems because there’s no seam in the universe. I’m hardly the first person to say it, but the best way to get at the universal is through the personal. So when I’m cataloging the physical objects that comprise my day, my individual way of being in the world, I’m detailing my relationship with the infinite.”