Jesus Takes My Grandma to Prom by Mia Nelson

The Italicized lines come from “Confessions” by Saint Augustine of Hippo

If Jesus didn't dance like the first coming of Elvis
my grandma never would have
loved him so much.
Who amongst us could resist the smooth talking,
cowlicked hand of God
as it crept up our blue cotton-sack skirt?
The Great Depression must have been happening somewhere
else because when my grandma fingers her plastic rosary beads
she blushes like a millionaire's champagne headed
second wife, she makes church in 1935 sound like the party
Gatsby didn't have the balls to throw,
and who to believe about heaven better
than those who have nothing
but His hand asking for a dance?
Grandma's St Augustine candle says
Come, Lord, stir us up
& take the lead on the jitterbug
until my grandma's seventeen year old heart
is as yellow as holy light spilled
through the very last stained glass in Huérfano, Colorado
because even the hungriest farmers
can't chew glass or get full up on the Body alone.
Sacred sacrament of pillaging, keep safe the bust of
Saint Augustine who is patron of
all the weepy eyes that roll around
in her blue jean pockets. They keep watching and watching.
Surely it is enough that God comes
to the dance at all, even if a little late, even if a little tipsy
from the last dizzying near-miss of a generation.
Why doesn't anybody believe, my Grandma wonders
as she dies, and it's because nobody rages anymore
with the angels, no one is playing beer pong with Augustine,
or Auggy, or whatever frat name sounds best like midnight
baptisms in an ocean of sweet beer while stars blink and blink like irises. They don't make celestial bodies
like they used to, no more men of the people or
the son of God cutting it up with the lepers or lonely girls in
a middle of a nowhere dirt-poor desert town that means "orphan"
in English. When no one came for Grandma, Jesus took her to the prom
and got her on her knees when no other man or gun barrel could have
done it. I imagine she heard St. Augustine whisper Kindle and seize us,
be our fire and our sweetness. When the patron saint of hell raising
tells you to stir it up,
you never forget it. You dance alone in the house
long after He drops you off. Back in the day,
you could dream of God &
there'd he be.