Stoop Sermon

We hold church on concrete, palms pressed to chipped brick,
the pastor is a man in a Timberland suit and a hoodie
preaching from the light of a streetlamp
that flickers like it’s arguing with the city.
Children count stars between high-rises,
naming constellations after corner stores and exes,
while elders fold their knees like prayer books,
hands smelling of soap and coal and yesterday’s work.

Hear us — we are hymns written in asphalt,
we are gospel in a cadence of bus brakes and bass.
Mama bangs a pot at dawn like a metronome,
keeping time for folks who try to sleep through rent.
The barber hums gospel under scissors, announcing confessions
that the church won’t touch: debts, dreams, small betrayals,
big loves stitched like seam repairs on Sunday best.

We sing low because the night belongs to sirens
and the moon keeps one eye open for the missing.
But our songs refuse to be quiet; they rise
like steam from a man’s cup of coffee in his palms,
like prayers whispered into the hollow of a building’s shadow.
Listen — the corner speaks in a language of survival:
“Pass me that change,” “Hold my kid,” “Watch my back,”
a chorus, a litany, a promise counted in loose bills.

We trace lineage in graffiti and recipe cards,
call our ancestors in the names of kitchen things:
collard, grit, elbow, grind. They answer in the heat
that never left the sweat of our grandparents’ shirts,
in the stubbornness of our women who braided futures
out of nothing but patience and song.

Sometimes the sermon is silence — heavy, holy;
sometimes it’s laughter that splits open like dawn.
We learn scripture from stoplights, forgiveness from stoops,
and the word mercy from a man who shared his shoes.
This city prays back. It will not let us forget
how to stand, how to bargain with god and landlord,
how to love with gloves on, how to keep a smile
like a flashlight stashed for midnight.

When the preacher folds his hands, the block claps.
We are a congregation made of cracked pavement miracles,
and every day we find new ways to keep singing.