after Kevin Prufer
O Lord born with your eleven fingers, piece of your pupil missing, we have prepared the world
to your specificities.
Styrofoam God, we have reduced these microbeads, made plastic the rotes of dust, encrusted our
lungs, curled fibers inside the rain!
We have drawn & painted in the pelican, Lord, slick with oil, that you may proudly watch us
clean it with Dawn on the television.
Lord of the mountains’ exit wounds, O mylar God, marvel from above the hills’ rust-patinated
tails, falcon resting there inside you while the whole world looks on.
Lord of the sleeping idols of Mt. Rushmore, the hidden histories stored in the undisturbed stone
rooms; to you we force praise.
To you we raise our Roundup wand, keep trim our lawn & sewn garden. In your sunwarmed hay
we drowse our lives away, praying to eat of your ripened love.
Lord of the ghost forest salted over with a melting world, this Great Tribulation we offer up to
you. For you we have found ways to set the ocean ablaze! See, O Lord, how for your
pleasure we have turned the Animas gold!
O Great Grandfather, we have arranged many fatted calves to wander the countryside entire, to
search out every corner, not knowing where you may appear.
Lord of National Parks, the trodden biological soil crust, we raise our chalk-heavy hands to you.
Our fires blacken your stone & our machines roll over Joshua forests.
Anaphylactic Lord of high rising water, the home we are losing to your flood, your terrible
raging wind, Lord of the Disaster Relief Fund, we have this canoe for your holy abode.
& when we moved out West: Lord, through the smoke, your galloping light. We saw your
awesome power: skies darkened with ash, the menaced sun we moved under as our car
surrendered down the highway. . . & when we couldn’t push through, realized our girlfriend’s
campsite was surrounded. . . Lord, thank you for the humility.
Lord, we would set it ablaze all over again, & we do, for we know you’re always eager to
enforce our child’s gender into your arms.
We marvel at the steel slatted walls of your bordered heart, & these high electric arch-gravity
dams; Lord, that we might throw ourselves off.
But, O Lord, why are there children drowned in the river? We were oblivious until your flood
took everything from us.
All we ask is your praise, O God, for the miracles we have erected. Witness this tame field of
progress & know us; we hardly blink at all.
Cockroach God crawling the lead pipes, centipede God among asbestos, we did not mean to earn
your wrath.
Lord we caught tagging our door with blood, backpack full of ash, Ziploc bags over your feet.
Lord with the locusts in your mouth, stars in your drunk spittle. . . will we be forgiven?
Seth García holds an MFA from the University of New Mexico, where he served as poetry editor for Blue Mesa Review. His work can be found in Alaska Quarterly, Zone 3, Terrain.org, museum of americana, and Reckoning, among other venues. He is the recipient of a North Street Collective Artist Residency.