"Ark of Safety" by Casey Broadwater

I.

There’s a war behind the veil,
he said, and so our plastic heroes and
beasts and villains—and their
accessories, baby teeth pocked—were
burned
in the fire pit out back.

Greyskull wept like a candle and
curled in upon itself and was
gone. Hordak, a blue smear on a
smoldering rock.

We salted our cheeks, wailed,
were bought off with a catalog
go-kart, fast as eight horses, fast
enough to race Tauruses down the
side
of the state road.

Later, we found Cringer’s green
head in the ash, placed it behind
the shed, behind the woodpile,
in a
rotted out knot of pine.

II.

In matching seersucker
we were placed on the piano
bench to hold our baskets up
for the camera.

We scattered the plastic grass
and mother cried because we were
late enough as it was.

And we were sorry, knew better,
sat still for the sermon, the
admonishments, for the laying on
of hands, the eating of the body
and the drinking
of the blood.

Back home we had roast
and hid our green beans in
hollowed out dinner rolls
so we could be excused.

III.

For our birthday we
were given a book with a
black and white photograph
of a real leviathan, rotting on
a hook, dredged up by a
Japanese
whaling ship.

Another page showed
human and dinosaur
footprints side by side in the
limestone bed of the Paluxy
River.

We could go see them
if we ever visited great uncle
Malin in Nacogdoches.

It’d be a long drive, he said
but wouldn’t it be something
to stand there?

IV.

Signs and wonders: tracer shells
and white fireworks in nightvision.
Them’s using Willie Pete, said
Paw-Paw, finger at the TV.

Behind the pulpit, a man
with a special anointing
told us the oil fires might
just be
rising from the abyss.

We wait, he said,
on the angel with the key
to the pit.

V.

We stopped playing horse
when they pulled up in a red
truck and got out and smashed
bottles in the parking lot, shook
spraycans and made stars inside
circles on the brick side
of the sanctuary.

Drove off with middle fingers out the windows.

Then Mr. Magruder
found half a cat hanging from
a tree on his farm.

Said he’d seen this before,
when he was a warlock, before
his Saul of Tarsus moment, before
the scales fell from his eyes.

Said these boys were under
the sway of a territorial spirit.

But this, he said, pointing up, is
the King’s dominion.

VI.

Looky there, he said
and pulled off Route 68
by a steel girder skeleton:
God’s Ark of Safety,
Being Rebuilt Here.

It was sleeting and we
looked through the windshield
as the wipers smeared and
un-smeared the rock salt.

Did we know an expedition
had found gopher wood, black
with pitch, on the upper
slopes of Ararat?

And did we know a climber
had taken photos of the prow
but was pushed into a
crevasse by an unseen
hand?

And now the Turks,
playing hardball with the
permits. But all’ll be
revealed, he said,
when it’s time.

Mother pinched
the bridge of her nose
and leaned her head
against the clouded wet
passenger window.

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