God of Better Things

2 Minutes Read Time

This photograph shows a spiderweb with raindrops on it hanging on a branch. — Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash

Getting dressed this morning was easy, 
and the god of better things to worry about 
did not provide his invisible hand, moving 
me in the direction of black on black.
That was perhaps some nascent fashion god 
who, wedded to the god of body image, 
ensured the store shelves were full of black.
The god of goth girls whispered a secret
to me, but I swatted her away, an afterthought. 
The god of daybreak left runny egg all over.
But the god of better things knew better than us. 
No, the god of better things was probably sitting 
under an angel trumpet tree, weeping
with the god of illusion, who turned the line
of flapping laundry into tanagers, bright parakeets, 
macaws, shouting to the god of lost football fields.
Oh, how many football fields of rain forest
were lost today? Let’s consult the god of maps, 
whole lands not even swallowed by the ocean,
how many holes in the pulpy fibers made from the soul 
of a tree, like an earth dug full of holes for oil,
long since abandoned by the god of monkeys, 
the god of bats, the god of lime-backed frogs,
so sour is his vengeance, god of puzzled ladybugs, 
god who addresses grievances on behalf of bees,
god of earthbound darts who baffles highway traffic, 
who covers rain and arrows, comets, fallen sparrows, 
god of nutmeg, god of the boot-sucking mud, god
of clangor, god of mounting wind and sharpened pines 
bristling the mountain’s face, where do we even begin?

Jaimee Hills

was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1979, and was educated at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Measure, Blackbird, and elsewhere. She works at Marquette University and lives with her husband, Gerry Canavan, and their two children in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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