In Short – Issue 3 (Spring 2025)

May 31, 2025

“Wise Ol’ Owl Sat In An Oak” by Camellia Paul

[Terrible is the punishment of the Lord]

By Darby Price

Terrible is the punishment of the Lord for those who believe in such things. My mother believes in the rapture, and for this reason, she says, she will not donate her organs. She says in the end times, everything will be called back to its original place—even if borrowed, even if embodied in somebody else. I wouldn’t want someone to be driving along, she says, and POOF—their heart, my heart, is suddenly missing. As absurd as the logic may be, I admit that I admire her concern. Forget for a moment that nobody wants her porous lungs. Nobody wants her congested heart, or the liver run through a lifetime of bottom-shelf Burgundy. What an odd sort of way for the Lord to proceed: hearts and livers and kidneys reclaimed, reassembled. What if the body is buried for years, and the soft tissue is processed through the bellies of worms, and the worms get eaten by robins, and the robins get eaten by hawks? Or, if a dead sinner’s heart is placed gently in the believer’s chest, will there be a palpating muscle left in the La-Z-Boy when the rest of the body is taken? There are so many questions my head is the head of a pin, and innumerable angels rattle within.

Darby Price (she/her) is a poet and hybrid writer. She teaches in the Composition Program at UC Irvine and as a Teaching Artist with WriteGirl Global. Her work has previously appeared in Zócalo Public Square, RHINO, Cimarron Review, and No Contact, among others. Her debut, the lyric memoir All the Lands We Inherit, is available for presale at Black Lawrence Press. Darby lives in Southern California and makes her digital home at www.darbyprice.com.