by Devlin Cooper

An addict told me that the idea of God probably interferes with our spiritual fitness
Five years before that a Buddhist asked me what God means to me
G O D I S R U S T
                                            Rust reminds what’s fair is fair
                                            As beauty’s kind in disrepair
God is an empty apartment
God is the steel and the sawdust
G O D I S L O V E
                                            Love thus exacted from the other could not ASK for anything;
                                            it is pure engagement without reciprocity. Yet this love cannot exist
                                            except in the form of a demand on the part of the lover.
God is my grandfather’s pen
God is a noise in the basement
God is ignoring a statement
God is her womanly fragrance
God is excusing your lateness
God is a new monthly payment
God is a bus from South Station
God is The Birth Of A Nation
G O D I S A S T R A N G E D R E A M
                                            The importance of the act that (in spite of the fact that I and that you
                                            had Carefully ourselves decided what this cathedral ought to look like)
                                            it Doesn’t look at all like what you and what I(of course) carefully had
                                            Decided on(but
God is my cathedral
God is scrap wood leaning against a new apartment complex
God is the same tree over the same stream
God is sixteen years
God is red God is white God is blue
God is one million watts of light
God is being and nothingness and untitled 195 and an unknown writer
God is a mask from Halifax your grandmother sent you
God is semen
God is a lecture hall and one of the students is very upset
God is the first drip of blow when the back straightens up
God is a lack of self control
God is the only thing in the way between me and spirituality

---

Devlin Cooper is a writing student and actor based in Brooklyn, raised in Lexington, Massachusetts. He loves forests and mountains and rivers and the ocean, soccer, coffee, dinner parties, ice cold beer, family, and Funyuns. At the University of Vermont he studied under Major Jackson. In July 2019 he made his stage debut as Billy in Cigar Lounge. His work has appeared in Goodbye Horses, Peer Paper Platform, Art With Friends 001, Too Short Productions, Advo, and he’s the coauthor of All Innocuous Like, a collection of short works, along with Kay Brugmans of Print The Future and Otherwhere. While AIR at Peer’s Open Atelier in 2016, he produced the exhibition Rearranging America. At NYUSPS, he is a Creative Writing Major. Special thanks to Sofie, Jack, Max, Connor, and RJ. Hire him.