The First Time God Speaks to You (Revision 2)

[Lizzie]

Hey Todd. I do love me some religious, confessional themes, especially when they're mixed with just the right amount of cynicism and blasphemy.

It won’t be like the preachers say. -- comma at the end here?
As they strut like college boys with their father
into the whorehouse of their imaginings. -- Strong start. I love the themes of cronyism, corruption, and smug entitlement. Preachers as trust fund babies getting through Yale on their dad's money and reputation despite abysmal grades and a rape conviction. Reads like the ultimate expression of privilege.
God is not concerned -- like the line break and stanza break here so that the statement could be combined with both lines surrounding it.

with a back ache in South Carolina, -- Maybe Georgia? It sounds better to me with fewer syllables.
nor does He speak in the voice
of your wife through a radio transmitter.

If light is simply His self-revelation, -- this is a dramatic turn away from the immediacy of the previous stanzas. Honestly, I find the change of voice jarring.
and at a word galaxies spun out stars,
an explosion of so many dying fireflies. -- This stanza is not a complete sentence.


If breath from His anthropomorphic lungs -- starting to tune out. I think it's the slightly sermony voice I'm hearing that's triggering an automatic sleep response. It's conditioning. 
filled our lungs, so that we would also speak,
become His image in resounding echo,

then when we hear that whisper, 
the infinite will settle on our tongue 
a brand unquenchable. I found

it to be like an envelope torn open, -- re-engaging here, where the personal comes back to the forefront.
contents spilled out--a forgotten detail 
never learned, like a string
never tied to an invisible finger. -- mind bending -- good way to show something that can't really be shown.

There was only the name of a stranger, 
her life in an intricate script, 
a half-brother, my likely schizophrenia, -- I like the stranger and the allusion to a kind of ecstatic experience, but I don't know what the allusion to a woman and a half brother add to the scene. Makes me feel like part of the story is missing, since we just mention and move away.
and the pressure to write it all down. -- This is a nice visual of someone like the apostle Paul being compelled to write. I like this a lot.

The next day, she existed, Ex nilhio, -- makes me think of how we create reality through language -- once you name something, label it, you see it everywhere. I don't think you need a comma after "day."
like a conjuror's trick, or a book -- don't need a comma after "trick."
I had already read. The world wobbled
like a top, and I couldn’t return to silence

no matter how I covered my ears.

There is some imagery in the middle bit, but it's not surprising. I'd try to distill the essence of what you're trying to say in a couple of good metaphors/images. I just find the middle too telly, basically. It seems like you have a lot of ideas in this one that are still being worked out.

Hope this helps. Always enjoy reading you!

Lizzie