Steven Peterson is a poet and playwright living in Chicago. His poems appear in Alabama Literary Review, America, The Christian Century, Dappled Things, First Things, Light, Modern Age, The North American Anglican, and elsewhere. A selection of his poems are included in the anthology Taking Root in the Heart (Paraclete Press, 2023). His plays have been produced in theaters around the USA. He is currently a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists.
Your words, six hundred years old, fill our minds: my brother’s keeper and let there be light, it came to pass and seek and ye shall find, plain-put so in faith we’ll fight the good fight. What’s that you said? The boy who drives the plow should know more of the scriptures than a priest?…
When some big loudmouth makes a crack, some I hate Christians rant-attack, I want to beat him to a pulp. Which isn’t Christian. So, I gulp it down and don’t—but dream I did. It’s like when Peter sliced that ear off Malchus as the end drew near and Jesus said, No more of this! Our…