Poetry: “God as a Teenage Girl Listening to Siamese Dream during Free Time at the Yearly Retreat at St. Joseph’s Catholic Center” by Maren Logan
There are many ways to picture God, as our world’s numerous religions and spiritual practices prove, and Maren Logan’s poem explores several unconventional depictions. God begins “as the boy in geometry everyone has a crush on,” including the speaker and her friend, Maria. Then God morphs into Maria’s aunt, then a community college student rock star, before finally landing in the form of a teenage girl. Logan captures how there’s a bit of something holy and powerful hidden within so many of us, right there alongside our many flaws — our mayonnaise breath, our hoarding, and our blasphemous band posters.
Read Logan’s poem below.
God as a Teenage Girl Listening to Siamese Dream during Free Time at the Yearly Retreat at St. Joseph’s Catholic Center
to Maria. No one’s supposed to know who, but she does.
We are both praying on royal blue foam mats, our knees
are soft and pink as raspberries, to laminated Jesus in the
pockets of our skinny jeans. If God loves everyone, that
means he also loves Billy Corgan, I whisper. Do you think
God goes to Smashing Pumpkins concerts like a dad to his
kindergartner’s Christmas recital? During retreat lunch, she
berates me. It comes from her mouth like cheese-flavored
dust at the corners of her lips and the tips of her spongy
fingers: she whispers slut. At mass, we recite the psalms
of our phone numbers. God as the boy in geometry
everyone has a crush on. God borrows my gel pen.
The ink squeezes soupy and smelling like cotton candy.
He scribbles on his ankles and bare soles, says He’ll
call us back, which of course, He doesn’t. Maria is upset
because obviously, God is talking to other girls.
Maria doesn’t really believe that God loves everyone,
because, realistically, where would he store all the flowers?
Her nose wrinkles. God as her hoarder aunt, living in a
trailer barricaded with soup cans and as-seen-on-tv
appliances. Herself as the shiatsu that starved on a diet
of yarn and cardboard. Maria doesn’t understand why God
doesn’t love her the way she wants to be loved. If we are the
Body of Christ, she wants the anatomy reconfigured for her.
She wants to know the exact splinter of bone her body occupies.
Sometimes I ask boys why they don’t love me, I say, and it
makes me feel braver. Maria wants to tell the other girls,
I explain to Father that Maria thinks I’m a slut because
I’m friends with a boy from the community college and
he plays guitar. God as the rock star. And I let her believe
I’m a groupie, because it is much more romantic to lose
your virginity to boy with a funny laugh and mayonnaise
breath than to admit you’re sitting bare legs on his driveway
listening to his band practice, to admit you aren’t loved at all.
I remember Maria telling me her favorite prayer was the
Divine Mercy Chaplet because she could feel the words
scraping the insides of her eyelids, until the watery fluid
softened them. And so she would fall asleep, praying on
REM loop. I guess I listen to music the way you pray,
I said. Over and over and over, until I believe it’ll come
true, until I believe someone is listening. Though I know
they aren’t. And she said, those band posters on your
wall are blasphemy. When reconciliation time ends, she
is still praying, her eyes cinched shut like a coin purse.
I think: God would have an easier time loving everyone
if He were a teenage girl. Writing love letters on the hairy
worn-off glue on the back of a sticky note. Daydreaming
in class. Searching for a second to wedge Her love into
every crevice of a conversation. I like this book. Do you think
Thom Yorke has read it? If you’re cold you can borrow my
sweatshirt—it has Courtney Love on the front. Shouting across
the cafeteria to prove She loves you more than anyone, ever.
God saying, I know all your songs by heart. I listen to
Siamese Dream and imagine it slipping into my sinuses
praying in “Hummer” every time I sneeze. I dream God
texts Maria: wyd? I can almost hear her pearly nails
tapping the screen like rain drops. She is searching for a
way to pour all her love and devotion into three letters.
Maren Logan
Maren Logan (she/her) is a writer and multimedia artist from Indiana. Her five poems on “Midwest Boredom,” won the Tom Andrews Clapping Award in 2025. Art publications can be found in The Penn Review and Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. She is currently a columnist for The Purdue Exponent, writing about loss-of-innocence and alternative music in undergraduate college life.
