I touched America’s belt and heaven crumbled. America lurched into me and broke my seal. Because of the silence that followed, I could tell that mine was the seventh seal America had broken. I stood up and walked outside. The latter rain fell on my face as I looked up to heaven. I could already tell, art had been conceived inside me.
Every one’s vision of what heaven will be like is different.
Before entering heaven, I imagine
people line up on beaches,
washing handguns in the ocean
while rain falls in the sunlight, puking out rainbow.
We march through the colors into heaven,
which is an endless field of empty flagpoles,
where we walk to rusty pole after rusty pole,
raising white flags,
forever.
I found America in the center of the garden. I took a bite and told him to eat the fruit. After he ate, America wiped the juice from his chin and started rummaging around in the bushes.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Looking for an axe,” he said.
He found the axe and started chopping down the tree of life. The blood that ran through the tree’s arteries stained the axe handle and ran in small beads down America’s arm leaving a red trace.
“What are you doing that for?” I said.
“I need lumber,” he said.
“What for?” I said.
“To build a roman cross,” he said.
The tree fell.
“Now I have to chop down the rest of the trees in the garden,” said America.
“Why?” I said.
“To build three ships to sail west,” said America.
“Why do you want to do that?”
“To find a garden without snakes.”
I just nodded. I did not have the heart to tell America such a thing did not exist. I did not want to crush his spirit.
She was analyzing
as if he were lab work,
while he was touching her eyelids,
as the light touches the hills,
when heaven cracks open.
These days everything is complex distortion,
and all he can hear from her anymore is echoes and static,
because these worn out mountains are part of their contemporary landscape.
By the time she touched him back
they had ripped the sky open like a pig’s belly,
red light spilling over the anxious valleys
like fresh blood.
I walked through the woods while storm clouds built up in the sky. America was sitting in a clearing on a tree stump staring through the branches. I leaned over in front of him so he could see the tops of my breasts. “What are you doing?” I said.
“I am waiting,” said America.
“Waiting for what?” I said.
“Waiting for God to pull the trigger,” said America.
Then the clouds broke open and it began to pour down oil.
They arranged the furniture of doom
like dead wildflowers in a cracked vase,
in the room where they plotted
how the world would one day be
their pre-summer playground.
In the stillness,
there is the sound of a file cabinet clicking shut.
There is architecture to everything; even April.
An alarm goes off in the middle of a spring day.
Helicopters drowned out the sounds of birds chirping.
Pain blooms in the hollows. Fear sprouts on the hillsides.
Panic grows like algae in a mud puddle full of frog eggs.
They walk through the park right before the sky broke,
taking no solstice that entire histories
were safely stored in that file cabinet.
Columbus could not turn back. He simply could not do it. I understood and was at peace with it. I thought about Columbus dreaming in the cabins quarters.
The seas kicked those ships up and down through the black Atlantic night like a tractor trailer twisting over mountains, carrying books along the highway towards the dawn of a new age. I imagined Columbus dreaming of an open world of endless possibility and heartbreaking beauty.
They awoke clumped together in a lion’s mouth
like a cluster of fermenting fruit,
chunks of apple still stuck in their throats.
They crawled over their soft crib,
a cozy den of fatal comfort,
and clamored over the sharp, hard teeth,
that tore their clothes and taught them about cold time.
The kind of time contained in clocks that count birthdays and break ups.
They fell onto the wicked white beaches by guilty gardens,
gravestones growing alongside flowers.
They planted condominiums and palm trees
where Lilith last left them lost and lonely.
She heaved the harshest realities in their early hands,
their future children frozen in laboratories somewhere far away.
The latest technology ripped open the minds
of this generation of modern American men.
They were the confusion that comes before blueprints,
the boredom just before bulldozers are born.
They were what the earth is when the ocean is angry.
They feel the air sucked out from under them by raw desire
when their wings melt in the sun,
and nothing has ever felt as good
as they fall into the soft sea of fertile flesh.
They rediscovered America a million times over in every inch of Eve’s skin,
while rust congregates
on the gates of hell.
I pulled out a shoebox from under my bed. The papers inside were yellow with age. I read the poetry America had written for me before I tasted alcohol, when I was seventeen.
I called America on the phone. He sounded surprised to hear me.
“Do you remember how you used to write me poetry?” I said.
America said, “Yes,” but I could tell by the sound of his voice that he was lying.
“How could you forget?” I said.
“I did not forget,” he said.
“Yes you did.”
“How do you know?”
“I know by the sound of your voice.”
“I am sorry that I am not the gentleman you once thought I was,” said America.
“But poetry is still not dead,” I replied.
“You’re drunk,” America said and he ended the call.
America made out with me in the backseat of a car in a shopping mall parking lot with awkward, inexperienced, fumbling hands. The humid air of summer came through the rolled down windows. America began to share with me his secrets and I promised not to tell anyone.
America thought my life was nothing more than a string of random and unconnected anecdotes about nail polish and new shoes. Maybe America’s life was also a string of random and unconnected anecdotes as well but America thought his anecdotes were funny, dark, and interesting. America noticed my toxic eyes were deadly. America was convinced I was the type of girl who absolutely needed to have a purebred dog, who always wore expensive underwear. America had an epiphany; we were not right for each other.
Disgusted he opened the car door and walked across the asphalt toward the lights. When America came to the sidewalk, he saw a hobo sitting there. The hobo wore a grimy flannel shirt and shredded blue jeans.
“Who are you?” asked America.
“I am God.” The man replied.
“What are you doing here?” America asked God.
“I am preparing for my death,” said God.
“Why?” said America.
“I need to die,” said God.
“Why do you need to die?” said America.
“So modern man can self actualize. I must die so you can live,” said God.
“But God lives on forever. If you die you are not God,” said America.
“But I am already dying. I am dying in your hearts,” said God.
America turned and walked behind the shopping mall into the woods. He approached a group of teenage males wearing baggy pants and black t-shirts standing around a fire burning tires. Sirens wailed in the distance. The teenagers passed America a bottle. The emptier it got the more America could identify with it. He almost forgot about me. As he drank, I was calling all my friends on my phone. For revenge, I was telling everyone America’s secrets.
