God online

is also lost. He stumbles on an english garden, likes

the ramble rose. He also likes that darker bloom

of gun smoke in his name. He damns a woman who killed

her child but first He said yes when she read proverbs 23:13.

it’s all for Him, He thinks. His algorithm makes it so. it shows

Him a french horse nosing into hospice rooms, a crying man

whose wife will die. what the hell, He thinks, tosses $5

to their fundraiser, does the same for cats enferaled by war —

what more could He do? He knows it’s the little things. He forgot

about sea monkeys until He found a girl raising millions

from a penthouse in dubai. He’s tickled by yeast rising

rounded boules on a sunlit windowsill, the micro

mirror of the jeweler pounding tiny diamonds into a ring

to the dust-wracked minors pounding out more. He sees

it all. you’re a pussy says a muscled man, but another says

it’s manly to cry and He believes them both. There’s space

in Him for all of it: rooms of boxed snakes, knives splitting

tangerines on trees, fireworks and the dogs who run from them.

//

when did You want to schedule the reboot? asks michael and God

tells him to fuck off, not until south park is done at least,

not until the woman in west virginia figures out what happened

to her mother on a snowy road in 1974, not until the wedding

of the century has happened, and He hasn’t seen that yet. but You’ve

been saying soon for millennia, michael bitches, and just look

at what they’ve done to the reefs. oh, He wishes michael would quit

it with the reefs business. He knows He hasn’t made much recently

but it’s kind of all been done, you know? the light, the roots, the

things He set to crawling through it. better to let it all play out

as He intended. He wants more roses. He wants more livestreamed

bombings, bid day fit checks, prophets in His name.

//

over dinner God’s wife asks Him what He did today and nods

when He says research. He shows her a ring camera compilation

of a package thief in dallas. back in my day, He grouses, they’d

cut off both his hands. she looks confused. but isn’t it always

Your day? she asks. He feels the itch again to throw her down there

like He threw their son once, to teach a lesson, to get things moving

but He likes too much that she doesn’t exist yet, not to them.

some things you’ve got to keep to yourself, an influencer sobs

into her camera. she’s giving it all to Him. she’s asking Him why?

amen, comments God, switching apps.

//

author's note: this poem was originally published in trampset