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# Vocational
- URL: https://www.journal.ninthheaven.co/literature/poem-vocational-theodore-heil/
- Published: 2025-07-13T04:13:34.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-13T15:26:32.000Z
- Description: "Vocational" is a micro-narrative that explores the depth of memory particularly through the lens of religion. This poem hopes to have achieved that religion and the spiritual life permeates every choice and is able to be arrived back to after a lapse, while also grappling with the middle.
- Author: Theodore Heil
- Tags: Literature & Poetry, Poetry, Issue I - Blue Winter, #Import 2025-10-08 13:07

Vocational is a micro-narrative that explores the depth of memory particularly through the lens of religion. This poem hopes to have achieved that religion and the spiritual life permeates every choice and is able to be arrived back to after a lapse, while also grappling with the middle. "Vocational" is transitional. The poem meditates on fragility and frailty, and the longing for something greater than one's self. The poem does not try to shy away from the aspects of religion, or the spiritual life, that are negative or tend to drive away those who grew up in the church, but sit with the results.

**Vocational**  
*by Theodore Heil*  
  
Meditating in the rumble,  
in the belly of a whale, I construct  
an economy of plain sorrows.  
  
They say “it takes a decade”  
—to prove you’re good  
at anything, that you’re in it  
  
for the long haul, and how many  
people live through that? My father  
became a Deacon and baptized  
  
every baby born in the church.  
This girl I knew in high school  
got married for poking  
  
a hole in a condom. Another is  
an aristocrat, married above her station.  
Still another became a teacher and me,  
  
I write like a once-in-a-while  
thunderbolt. And we had said That’s it  
and left with our diplomas stashed  
  
down the fronts of our pants  
like we used to do shoplifting  
Sundays at Walmart.  
  
I look up marriage certificates  
online and say my vows backwards.  
I look up how to get ordained.  
  
I look up graveyards and seminaries.  
I look up into the mirror nailed  
slightly higher than eye-level  
  
in the corner of my room,  
like the altar my father built  
in his empty yellow home.  
  
I dent precious things,  
I stuff them up my nose like  
tissue paper, like a gift wrapped  
  
birthday present rustling  
in me like the conductor  
announces the arrival  
of the next station.