Diego Enrique Flores, Día de los Muertos, San Andrés Mixquic, Mexico (photograph)
The last time I conversed
with the Great Sentience,
I asked, what the hell
are you doing and
He gestured at some
cobwebs, books that
needed straightening,
spiders announcing
their localities everywhere
by wrapping up their dead,
that is to say, meals
and recently mated ones
"For later," as we often say,
making several assumptions
at once, particularly latter-ness
and how nice an intention
can be, when more often,
as Great Fathers have
frequently done, He's
going to just walk out
and leave this horrible
mess behind, things
like cow mutilations,
the removed lips
and anus, the perfect
excision-work of maggots,
who are only really
children, still growing
up, eating all the soft
things so they can grow,
melt into metallic, bullet
-like wings, to visit other
bodies, landscapes
which, if they were human
they would think they
discovered first, as if
the wet birth caul
covering the face had never
happened, and no one
had ever said, now here's
a lucky one.