Little Gods
Strange, omniscient Maxine watches
A couple conceive on the backseat of a Yatsuki Gremlin
Listens to the creak of leather upholstery and ancient suspension
And the hushed whoosh of a snowstorm raging outside the car
While, seventy years later,
Their great grandson thumbs cartridges like little lipsticks
Into a magazine
Puts the muzzle to his throbbing temple
And waits for the 12:15
To crescendo past his pokey tenement
Muffling the shot

She could save him
Make the trigger stick
Delay the train till he loses his nerve
Clanking the handgun down on the folding table
Then slinking back to his foldout bed
She could miracle the cartridges to Pez bricks
Even Lazarus his dead boyfriend
Back out of the grave mouth,
Dewormed and breathing
But the fact is, She likes symmetry

When the bullet ruptures
His brain’s pleasure centre
She sees his ancestor hit orgasm
And a nodding dog on the car’s parcel shelf
Bops its head in mute approval

It’s not my place to judge
I’m just a facilitator

Pablo likes to be capricious
I write this in His notes
He appears to one of His most ardent followers
As a kind of gubbling blancmange
O loyal subject, the blancmange intones,
Ask of Me a boon, that I may grant it.
The follower prostrates, requesting wisdom.
No, says Pablo, and vanishes in a blast of flatulence.
‘That was an interesting exchange,’ I say,
Inhaling through my teeth.
‘Let’s talk about what happened there.
Why did You refuse?’
But Pablo is busy appearing in the splatter pattern
Of a high-strung spinster’s dropped porridge;
She drags a neighbour round to see
By which time
The image has changed to buttocks.
‘I don’t know,’ He says.
‘Because it was funny?’

I facepalm at Anton’s lack of originality
But can’t say
Christ alive, human beings I can understand
– in Your own image and all that –
But could You not imagine
A world without Rice Krispies?
Instead, I try: ‘I notice You’ve filled
Your world with lots of familiar things.
Is that a comfort to You?’
He shrugs. He is watching
A repeat of Leave It To Beaver on three million sets.

Rupert removes the top of a chap’s head
Like a boiled egg
During a wedding reception.
Nanase’s world is all dogs being sick.
Dogs being sick, I jot.

Heinrich has created an impossible ice planet
With a flaming core
And no people.
He spends aeons
Melting elaborate catacombs
Into the huge spherical glacier.
When, at last, He blows into it,
The orb hoots
like a jug.