SURFACES

Winter’s hand. Damp streets. Morning’s glare
on clouded windows. March the third.

Light whittles branches to brushstrokes.
We are not fooled by the appearance of things.

Fear in its little tomb wakes with a sigh.

We are not fooled by what is
behind the appearance of things.

Sleep deprived, god and the devil sit
in the hospital cafeteria.

Fear spins its little web.

THE ELECT

In the barrens among twisting pines,
god presses his body into the sand,
fistfuls of twigs. Pine needles mark his hands.
That the devil makes music is a lie.

The devil is a glass echo chamber,
and god has forgotten his own name.
He can no longer remember his realm;
he has no memory of the number

of the Elect. In the way that worms
eat the earth without end, the turning sand
of the world flows through the Elect and
the devil fears water in all its forms.

Overhead, night spins through its iron vault.
When I woke, my lungs were salt.

Michael Gushue’s books are Sympathy for the Monster, Gather Down Women, Pachinko Mouth, Conrad, The Judy Poems with CL Bledsoe, I Never Promised You A Sea Monkey with CL Bledsoe, and, in collaboration with Kim Roberts, Q&A For The End Of The World.

Image: Olaf, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons