Matt DeBenedictis
In the age of animal sacrifices, the eon where fire transported voice, noise was kept bare as only a few had the means to knife their food to be heard.
Now an ever-long combustion of yelling and pleading surrounds the ethereal gates.
The time that angels were free to have sex with women and leave the offspring was not wholly unforgotten. An angel that fathered eight giants revealed to his fellow creations that the God would soon visit the low ones again.
Random fits the nature above us. No council to deliberate over grand plans and meaningful gestures. The God spins a fabricated image of earth, slapping his finger on a point of stop.
“Too depressing,” one angel whispers. The God’s right hand envelops Africa.
The God spins again.
The stop falls on England, the region known as Cardiff. A place that would guarantee questions surrounding Dr. Who and if/how/when a God could be placed into the cosmos.
The God spins again.
North America. Ohio. A place with spread out residents and lonely designs emptied by economic movement, the God pushes his finger deeper into the image: clouds reshape and dirt becomes architecture.
Considered to be met is a person living below an empty house.
A sign outside says To Floor For Rent and the inhabited basement has no windows. A carpeted kitchen is filled with debris of consumption; t-shirts damn all leaks.
The God leaves his angels and appears to the man.
Words are masked to the angels. They line up as valuables gazing down as the man’s fear is absent when his vision clears to see a God standing in his living room. They speak in speeches; long pauses are punished on them both. Time passes and more voice comes from the man than from the God. As the sun rotates its place the man is alone again, staring at a moment faded.
The God greets the higher creations with a prophecy parted by the man. The angel’s tilt their heads as one and release their hands to hold the God’s voice.
“The end of this world will come by way of disease, a germ will grow and fester. The poor will become past first; the ones bearing the work of all others will bury themselves in long formed traditions. Everything rotates in time. The ones left to breath last will be the ones of influence.”
The angels looked on seeing all sides of the God. The past, the present, the future all exposed. In one expulsion the angels speak as one: “The rich will inherit the earth.”
Matt DeBenedictis lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Across the street from his home is a transvestite who sells cocaine from a fanny pack. Kitana doesn’t know Matt is the author of Congratulations! There’s No Last Place If Everyone Is Dead, and two other chapbook collections, or that he runs the press Safety Third Enterprises and has more information about himself at wordsforguns.com.
