God Didn’t Exist

Robert Wood Lynn
Photograph by Ben Vaughn on Unsplash

so we had to invent him. The most expensive

public art project ever built. Or it was at the time

anyway. My cousin’s neighbor welded

some of the animatronics. Your uncle’s

ex-husband programmed the scepter,

its lightning randomizer. This kicked ass.

I thought it was worth it even just

for all the new species of birds issued

daily. The fifth and sixth seasons.

The midweek weekend. I didn’t mind

the pronouncements, I’d never kept track

of rules in the first place. The sky widened

and, for the first time, became the same

blue all the way across. This upset people.

They stood in long lines for the microphone.

Nothing sold faster than all those

municipal bonds to build a Heaven

to put him in. Someplace he’d stay quiet.

Somewhere out of the way.

Robert Wood Lynn’s debut collection Mothman Apologia won the Yale Younger Poets Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere.

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