a funeral march for the passing of gods

        We are digging a grave in the Iowa sky,
somewhere between the thunderhead and the flat line of the horizon.
It is ample to lie there, among the hagiographies
already interred in that stellate churchyard, old gods like cornflowers
pressed between the pages.

(a girl in the house plays with the serpents as they shed their skins,
unwinding from the caduceus and into her hands. She craves
pomegranates, then apples, uncertain
as to which maiden she is playing)