Politics of the Afterlife

The wasp nest the drones built

is finished,

and at night I hear them

suckling nectar

and hemolymph from victims.

I strip the porch boards,

fumigate—

pyrethin,

which scorches innards,

rages like a house fire

before it kills.

“They can all burn,”

I tell Thom.

Gehenna—a valley

where the sacrificed are stacked,

where I ferry the nest

after I’ve turned it

to a grey tomb safe

for children.

I want to be bigger.

Unconscionable life,

where I must kill

more than I can save,

I want to love you. You

and Rob Bell,

who wrote that Ghandi

wasn’t in hell.

A thousand parishioners

left his church.

An article said people got uncomfortable

with the idea others

didn’t have to suffer

when they should suffer, even if

it’s horribly, with extreme

instruments of torture for good.

We need a God

capable of wrath

one pastor wrote as if God

were his echo.

The article doesn’t indicate

what the pastor did after this,

but I imagine him

turning from presbytery

to nave,

reluctantly

into the spring

where ferns and flowers

the color of persimmons

swatched the lawn.

And he thought

how greedy the flowers

look, jockeying for an angle

on unclouded sky.

Yes, and how survival

made them cruel

at times.

Thick malaise coming,

anvil clouds

coaxed

into obscurity.

I have coveted,

and I have been coolly vengeful, Lord.

But you are much larger,

much kinder than me.

You can be like the clouds

who when they rain

sound like wings

beating and beating

the dark.