Eschatology in Crayon Wax

October and the Llano Estacado’s

echoless sea of dry grass

mingles with the state’s highway

dust, fall’s rumors

of Ebola, and the firmament’s

half-asphyxiated petitions

for rain. In Plainview,

I stop for gas, drop

my last twenty for a paper

and fifteen on pump #3.

The attendant offers his requisite

“God bless” and nod

and I go out to fill.

Behind him, the greasy rotisserie

turns—100% Texas Beef!—

its hum vaguely tempting

and just as clichéd, predictable

as the radio evangelist

whose Sunday call-in show

I’ve been following since

Amarillo: Putin’s rise,

the Tribulation, RFID,

and freedom’s number of days.

This far south,

the prophecies’ signal is as much

white noise as it is

likely, though the headline

below the fold might beg

to differ: “Man Sees

'Mark of the Beast’; Cuts

Off, Microwaves Hand.”

I remember Children’s Church:

coloring in the angel

and his bowl of wrath, the Beast

with seven heads, its seven

crowns, the pale horse

and rider I filled with green,

an eschatology in crayon wax

shaded by Gorbachev, the dollar’s

decline, duck and cover.

And yet, those Sundays, too,

were just another morning

in America rising then

as it did three days ago

over the aluminum belly

of that off-the-grid Airstream,

its warped linoleum, and the body

bled out and prepped to rise,

the highlighted scripture open

beside him, something about saints,

the trumpet’s first fiery blare,

the Morning Star gleaming

in the still sky like Diablo Steel,

its glint beneath the kitchenette’s

fluorescents just before

the Sawzall’s teeth met wrist

flesh, before the makeshift

tourniquet and the bloody thumbprint

on the microwave punched to max.

Due east, the caprock and aggraded

caliche rise and fall

like an entire history of belief

buried beneath the Panhandle’s

alluvial fans: everything

I’d learned of Eden and the angel,

its fiery sword, Nineveh

and the windows of heaven opened,

a Roman execution, and how

all of it was reason enough

to fear a port-wine birthmark,

the Beast, and ATMs. The pump

clicks off and I head in.

Hours from home, I spend

what’s left on a hotdog, a Coke,

and pocket the loose change.

Even now, my prayer’s

the same: trust in the Lord

and lean not on my own

understanding of liberty,

perestroika, the radical fall.