Emaciation

I keep thinking you can’t eat god. You can’t eat god—his second four will consume him because you can’t eat god. The billboard along the interstate asks LOOKING FOR A SIGN FROM GOD? Half a mile later: Here It Is—the backgrounds a clean china. Another sign GOT FAITH?: water from a faucet ferments to burgundy gold upon crossing the lips of a goblet. At the core of Indiana, people hunger beyond vocabulary. I’m hungry pronounced “God hates.” In the middle of the workweek, the hungry men clamor through campus growling “God hates fags.” Smites them. Sows fire beneath Mohammed. Awaits murderers of innocence—contradictions wild as ulcers blooming in their bellies. And I kept mumbling “people can’t eat god.” You can’t eat god. He will get his seconds because he feeds these people god—a bread not meant for the belly skews the body’s fullness, the body that walks everyday and does the work of god. And these hungry people belt “God hates, God Hates”—the bloody fetus on their placards like a body, like bad bread, and bleeding faucets flow on billboards. If these bodies hate, it is because they’ve known hunger for half a century and every fourth year the ballot brought them little bread. They close their ears, tilt chins up—tongues waiting.