Liz Cooledge Jenkins

Category: Poems

  • These Lines

    I resonated with much of Austin Channing Brown’s recent post about “unity” to her e-mail newsletter “Roll Call.” Austin encourages her readers to be aware of ways we might be asked to participate in a kind of unity that works against justice rather than for it. You can check out the post here if you’re…

  • “White Blessings”

    As Lecrae said in response to Louie Giglio’s ridiculousness, “This needs to be a time when [white evangelicals] listen and learn, and not a time when you’re leading” (see this Washington Post article about last week’s “white blessings” debacle if you need some context or aren’t sick of reading about it already). Some thoughts, in…

  • Solvitur Ambulando

    My mom introduced me to this phrase recently, and I liked it (even though it’s not Greek), so I wrote a poem about it. Solvitur Ambulando Solvitur ambulando it is solved by walking so we walked  and walked  and walked  until we found a better way. We walked until the blood that paved our streets…

  • Poker, Prodder

    Keeping with the theme of the recent Christian celebration of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, juxtaposed with this reality we find ourselves in: Poker, Prodder Holy Spirit, poker, prodder,  discomforter of unjust  horror-filled structures and disquieter of all who profit from them, table-turner of the wrongly weighted scales that weigh color and find darkness wanting,…

  • Kitchen in the Clouds

    This past Sunday Christians around the world celebrated Pentecost – the coming of the Holy Spirit to dwell with and in human beings, as recounted in Acts 2. In the context of all of the recent and ongoing uprisings across the US – and with thanks to my pastor Lina Thompson for teaching that the…

  • It Fell

    Inspired by the New Testament book of Revelation and its images of fallen empires, which the author referred to as “Babylon” so as not to attract unwanted attention from the state of Rome. See Revelation chapters 14 (v. 8) and 18 (v. 2), for example. I was intrigued by reading in Greek and realizing that…

  • I Do Not Wish to Perform My Grief

    A poem reflecting on George Floyd’s murder, the subsequent protests, and my hope to stand in solidarity with my Black siblings in their weariness, grief, and anger. I Do Not Wish to Perform My Grief I do not wish to perform my grief as if it could be part of a persona crafted carefully to…

  • Big Trees

    Big Trees I find something reassuring  in big trees, the ones that asked no one’s permission when they sprouted from the ground  a hundred or a thousand  years ago. I would not know, unless one fell, what endless dramas its rings  might hold in memory―but I can dream: I dream up years of plenty,  like…