Masterpiece

The seven best beatboxers don’t deserve
all of god’s green airtime.
It’s been a long night.
Do your idols the solid
of being their twilight. Heap
soil on their pine
pebbles on their stones
and join them when the next seismic event
turns all sediment to orange juice.
Be not redundant with time’s awesome bidding.
After afterlife comes
the sun exploding
then the heat death of the universe
and finally
when the grindstones have cleansed
every last grain
of toothpaste from the Holy Molars
peace and endless quiet.

***

The architecture of a universe

Two girls hold the world in their hands
like you did once

for a salamander,
molding his water palace
with your fingers.

That was when
echoes carried us between the nodes
of our residence tunnels
and the pause of a galley
around a corner

was a constant solace.
Then the future sicced its clouds
on our big, wet eyes.
We sucked our stomachs
into a point of no return.

It’s a whole new
wurlitzer: hums of shorebirds eking
their little livings
while we gnaw at their stilts

licking for sugar from their canes
fearing the mouse-rumors in our walls.

***

Jake Goldwasser is a writer based in Brooklyn and Iowa City. His work can be found in The New England Review, Lit Hub, the Baffler, and elsewhere.