Philadelphia—Tania Runyan

Last month, we shared an interview with Tania Runyan. We are such fans of her poetry that we invited her to take over this Substack for the next two weeks. Tania has written several books of nonfiction and poetry, but we invited her to share a few poems from What Will Soon Take Place, a poetic journey through the book of Revelation. During this Stack Takeover, we’ll be sharing a few of our favorites, the poems based on the letters to the seven churches in Revelation.

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Philadelphia

by Tania Runyan

              Warning: In Case of Rapture, 
              This Car Will Be Unmanned 
				
One day he would vaporize me through the windshield,
allow my Corolla to plow into the Goths 

smoking on the street corner as I blasted off.
No way to save the screaming smudges down there.

Persecution was Charles Darwin on the bio study guide. 
Depeche Mode. The Mapplethorpe exhibit in LA. 

I had to tell myself that heaven would be so much better
than driving down Pacific Coast Highway, 

peaches on the passenger seat, salt wind on my neck.
I would tan till lunch then realize I hadn't thought

of him once. Was I keeping watch? Would I be ready 
if he sucked me from the sand? I would turn on my back 

and swear to keep my word when I had nothing 
to say, nothing to be saved from but a hell I couldn't see.

I held fast to an open door or, rather, the space 
it left behind, driving home with coconut oil on my skin, 

the sun in the mirrors, the uneasy hope of the saved.

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Tania Runyan is an NEA fellow and author of the poetry collections What Will Soon Take Place, Second Sky, A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air, which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature. Her first book-length creative nonfiction title, Making Peace With Paradise: An Autobiography of a California Girl, was released in 2022. Tania’s instructional guides, How to Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, and How to Write a Form Poem, are used in classrooms across the country, and her poems have appeared in publications such as Poetry, Image, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Christian Century, and the Paraclete anthology Christian Poetry in America Since 1940. She lives with her family in Illinois, where she works in educational publishing.