There is a man behind you.
You don’t see him,
Yet you feel a breath
That is not yours.

He follows you quietly,
footsteps that match your steps,
and you hear as if someone is calling you.
You turn around, but you see nothing.
And your heart starts to beat faster.

Maybe he is a warning,
or a sign that something dark
It is on its way to you.
Or maybe, he is real, a ghost,
a shifting shape and a watcher
waiting for you to look the wrong way.

You keep walking.
You don’t see him.
But you never feel alone.
There is a man behind you,
And he knows you
better than you know yourself.

Forgive me
For I can’t stand
The peal of your bell
Or the stench of your incense
Or any of your forward ways that
A wretch like me
Could only ever see as backward

Fear not
For I’ve decided
To commit
Wholeheartedly my life
To the scholarship of your ways
And have become godly
In my own right
By taking the power
Of my own life
Into my bloodied, sullen hands.

I’ve committed
The terrible crime
Of fanciful ideations
Of murder
The selfish and unnatural kind
Of which I adorned myself
Upon the Cross of Life itself
With a crown
Fit for a merciless peasant
And a tired white cloth
Made to appear golden
Through the filth of my bad works
That sticks like honey
Running down my thighs

I’m outside a McDonalds, smoking, my hands pink and shaking from the cold—God walks up to me—his smile nonchalant. “got enough cash for a coffee?”

I’m too proud to tell him no. It’s not like he doesn’t know the answer. He hands me a puke bucket. I ask him what I’m supposed to do with it. He laughs.

“Grace, darling, always comes in the most disgusting places. You have to want it to find it.”

He’s always saying shit like that. I want to ask him where the stars come from—ask him something about a father’s love—or why he only speaks in riddles.

Instead, he tousles my hair, tells me I should get a haircut soon. I wonder if he even noticed the thinning up top.  

As of tomorrow,
God resigns from Terra
and she will pack up her local lab.

She has not yet officially declared
the terrestrial experiment a failure,
but insiders say that
its sudden abandonment
can only be interpreted as such.

Subjects are to be left
to their own devices,
without further monitoring,
as all necessary data
has been collected.

Operations will be moved
to the Large Magellanic Cloud.
God says she has many new
exciting ideas for version 2.0
and will now be able
to focus on it fully.

While the design
hasn’t been finalized,
she expects it to have more oceans.
“I could watch cetaceans
all day long,” she says. “Also,
I want to have another go
at kraken and dorudons.”

Using agile development,
God expects version 2.0
to be operational sooner
than her first release,
in about 2.5 billion years.

folks would come from far and wide,
along treacherous mountain roads
rutted and overgrown,
to see that wily white-haired seer.

she sat outside her dilapidated cabin,
its windows brimming with sinister shadows,
its walls beset by clinging vines
and rampant stretches of parasitic fungi.

she perched atop the largest stump
found down in that haunted hollow,
her gnarled old toes twitching fitfully
as they skimmed the spring-fed rill.

she demanded strict silence:
whispered were the oracular utterances
of these unnamed forest gods
with whom she shared an affinity.

from whence she came none dared ask –
though some detractors concocted tales,
spinning wild yarns of a rumored history
involving witchcraft and diabolic mysteries;

I saw her as a clever old soul,
sharp as any Pythian priestess at Delphi,
gifted with insight into human nature,
and mindful of the allure of the unknown.

she predicted her own abrupt demise,
depriving her devotees of her premonitory power –
I still make the trek to that haunted hollow,
but I cannot interpret those whispered warnings.

They unearthed the enormous 
granite face in Peru: cinchona trees 
cleared away to reveal blind eyes 
staring skyward    a mountainous nose 
rising from the jungle    jagged teeth 
ringing a dark mouth through which 
the wind whispered and moaned
(longingly, Ahmed claimed). 
The discovery of a lifetime 
for a poorly-funded team.

Lopez had planned to spend 
three days documenting 
their find before returning 
to Lima    but one by one 
her team had slipped away 
under cover of moonless nights 
into the wet breathing jungle 
crawled or fell down 
into that stone throat 
never to return.

If you can’t hear it yet 
Andrea had explained dreamily 
wavering on the precipice 
then maybe you aren’t wanted. 
And how everyone screamed 
as she dropped away from 
their outstretched arms. 

Beth was the last to go 
fumbling with the tent zipper 
ignoring Lopez’s pleas   shoving her away. 
It’s still calling    Beth said    staring 
like a sleepwalker in a nightmare. 
They weren’t enough. 
It needs more   
                     deserves more.

The next morning Lopez took 
her can of beans to say good-bye 
to her expedition 
to the monstrous face 
that swallowed them all 
without deigning to ask her. 
Braced between two teeth 
palm scraped raw against the rock 
she dropped the can into the hole.
     Clatter
          clatter
     clatter
Nothing.

And something broke inside. 
Why not me?    Lopez shrieked. 
Why everyone else    and not me?

As she began to climb downwards 
into the mouth    
slipping into the dark 
it occurred to her 
she was still called 
just differently.

My cat can see around the curve of time,
when she’s awake.  Her green and golden eyes
are prone to skipping simple matters, such
as love, and care, and the ins and outs of who
had put that hairball in my bed. (She says
it was the dog.)  Instead, she looks at me
and sees near every human of my line,
from last to first, arrayed against the sky:
we’re simple beasts of burden, worshippers
who bring her tasty fish on which to feast. 

She looks at us and purrs.  I do not know:
am I the one she’s purring for?  A man
who lived a century ago? Or is
this rumble presupposing someone yet to be?
She swats her paw at shadows; at her age,
I wonder if her drive to hunt has slowed,
or if, anticipating prey, she prowls
for mice who won’t arrive for thirty years?
But when I ask, the withering look she gives
me causes me to think myself a fool.

She will not say if cats can see the dead:
if human loss of earthly life defines
the point at which a cat no longer purrs
for you. But, honestly? I like to think
I’ll see my cat—and every cat before—
along my bed at hospice when I reach
the point when human frailty bends my spine
and causes me to doubt the cats I’ll see.
I’ll look at every one of them, and say,
“I loved you all” — they’ll yawn as one, and turn
about, and settle down to sleep.