Two Texts

Devin Bustin

The Reason I Left My Vocation

An argument over the ethics of drinking. One against Three. One shows pictures of military life. He will return to the service. Pastor hammers in the closet. He has torn up the floor. He chips away at the ceiling. Baby teethes on neckties beneath dress clothes, and I am to watch her. I change shirts while she disappears. No one answers my Where is Baby, so I tell Pastor No More Pounding and Water is Leaking from the Ceiling. I cram under the torn floor and crawl until I find legs stuffed between beams like to insulate. I tug them out and cradle a limp, cloth doll, and when I tickle its ribs, it shivers like a machine. I keep searching. Pastor says I was to watch her. Correct me if I am wrong.







The Lead Pastor Visits

He pastored thousands, but he came to my house, appeared in my hallway. There he stood, with that hair. I expected a tiny microphone along his cheekbone. Since he didn’t have one, he didn’t talk. Next, I watched from the window as his eighteen-wheeler roared off the driveway, climbed the curb, and could not round our cul-de-sac or return to the main drag.

Devin Bustin plays six-string guitar in a band called Asher Lev.
This is often not true because by the end of his concerts,
his six-string is a five-string or even a four-string. He studies sentences
at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Although he grew up in Canada,
he now lives in an apartment overlooking a parking lot in Wheaton, Illinois.
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