- Mar 22
- 1 min read
The Turning of the Wife of Lot
First of all, she had a name, and she had a history.
—Scott Cairns
Of course she had a name: Edith
or Ado, maybe. She had a family,
a husband and daughters.
The image on the TV screen—
I turn the channel.
And a home. A city where God had promised
to spare the wicked for the sake of the righteous,
even just a few.
The story in my feed—
I turn my phone over.
But then He hurled fire and ruin.
All that was built up was taken down. Everything,
everyone, that was brought together was parted.
I feel that I feel less and less—
A pillar hardening inside.
The mortar of the earth and the pestle from
the sky ground everything to dust and ash.
The curse of turning away—
instead of toward.
Where’s the turn? the workshop
asks—the leap, the insight?
So she fled. And in fleeing,
turned. For that, God
turned her.
Every sonnet needs a volta.
Verse itself is
Or was it that she saw
—the flames and the smoke—
the completeness of it all
the turning of lines like the plow
turns at the end of a row.
and wept and wept
and wept. And in the dry air of the plain—salt.
JOSEPH RADKE works as a freelance writer and editor in Wisconsin’s Fox River Valley. He earned his doctorate in English from UW-Milwaukee. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals, including The Journal, Copper Nickel, Boulevard, Bellevue Literary Review, On the Seawall, Poetry East, and Southern Poetry Review. His website is josephradke.com.