Jet Fuel Review
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
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      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
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      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
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      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
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      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
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    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
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      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
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      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
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      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
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      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
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      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
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    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
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  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
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    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
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      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022

Chila Woychik

Ten Days with the Rural Jesus


Our world is on a bender with no one to clean up the mess. Star systems gape in awe, and someone left sensibility’s door ajar. I think, therefore I am, but I must think first. (A streak of white across an empty sky—is that you?)
 
Day 1 – Stripped down, every story is the same but for the details, and every ache commenced. Go a day without complaining about pain or a lack of sleep. Peek along the lines of reckoning. God is a warm fire, a popsicle in summer, someone’s hello on the tail end of disappointment. That’s him where the trail T’s so just follow the scent of blossoms on the long trek home.
 
Day 2 – A hundred cows and only five standing up. A storm’s coming, winds, tornado watch, and that means low pressure, animal movement. A rafter of turkeys scram along. Deer jump and dodge. Pinpoint a star in this rough night sky, and corral Jesus in a corn bin when the black clouds gather. A night’s worries squelch the song in our bones. Not so easy to release them to the great unknown, to the God of thunders.
 
Day 3 – In the rural world of fake news, we read that cattle align themselves north and south at any given time, based on the magnetic field of the earth. Someone should tell the cattle that, they who seem not to care about directional expectations or magnetic fields, but range haphazardly over these Iowan plots, east/west, southeastern/northwestern, and every point in between. Trees stretch heavenward, predictably.
 
Day 4 – We dive in too deeply, forget who we are. Our terminology stays the same though conditions differ. I wonder if that little white collar square covers a button.
 
Day 5 – Prayer is a strange concept and prone to maxims. Strange in the sense of a crap shoot being strange: why do we do it when there’s an astronomical chance that mountains won’t move and nothing but coal debris will be dropped into the sea. I’ve exploded with prayer these past days—a desolation of moments. Still the earth moves not neither does it ripple nor blanket me in waves of wisdom, depict me a rustic prophet in jeans.
 
Day 6 – I keep waiting for the death of something. Once we’ve lived long enough or seen too much or felt too much, we expect it. A dead garden, a dead tree, a dead friend. The sun sets each evening and something dies a little every day. In a saga’s rise and descent comes modulation. Tone tone tone tone tone. Adam heard God walking. Tell me about the stride. The heaviness of foot. Imagined drama is far less reliable.
 
Day 7 – We begin to think we’ve sinned the unpardonable. We believe the rants and indulge the ranter; we are, after all, imperfect.
 
Day 8 – I learn about distance and the Democratic Republic of Congo from two twenty-somethings working in a local Indian restaurant. I learn Swahili words like jukuu (grandchild), shangazi (aunt), and habari (hello). I learn that more to be feared than a renegade military is a Congolese aunt who will poison a family member for lack of attention, and call it voodoo. I learn that lions still roam the small villages. But in winter, they say the sun is bright and the air is cool, and there is never need for a coat, so in a fit of desire, I promise to visit in winter. I learn that churches are a thing there and that Jesus knows poverty.
 
Day 9 – God is not metaphysical, but a cloud with eyes, the beating heart inside a kind word. Theology helps us keep the order right, and the wine is always good. Further, theology is a distrust of common sense. Not that God is at odds with common sense but rather our interpretation of God swings on the faint winds of peer reviews. In these cases, it’s easier to believe in a flat earth than Amyraldianism. And at some point we begin to conclude that Baptist is more a creed than a creature. Even the Amish can be friendly, and they sell you their goods. In the end, we gather together to remember, and maybe forget.
 
Day 10 – When did the hole in the sky close up? We keep such a long line of memories strapped around our waist. Someone said there’s a road paved with past regrets we must walk, but that’s no road at all, instead, a valley of dry bones, and vultures perched on every high ledge. Better is the mapped-out trail with a little curiosity and time for excursions.




--
German-born Chila Woychik has bylines in journals such as Cimarron, Portland Review, and Silk Road. She recently discovered she had a sister who was given up for adoption at birth, but has since passed away. She’s on a quest to find out as much about her as possible. Chila won the 2017 Loren Eiseley Creative Nonfiction Award & the 2016 Linda Julian Creative Nonfiction Award. She is the founding editor at Eastern Iowa Review.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
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  • Features
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  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022