I'm Drinking Again, Let's Start a Family

Bunnies will not stop eating all
the carrots in the garden. Bunnies will not even
serve our stately houseguests! God,
now a pure beam of energy, has a plan.

Bunnies appear as if we can't see them
gathering carrots. A bunny is incredulous,
a bunny sits in the afternoon sun, a bunny
waxes prophetical. Bunnies impersonate Jesse

Owens at the 1936 Olympiad
then pole vault over other bunnies who eat
carrots. Next week God will indignantly
throw ashes in our faces and force us to abstain

from heavy petting in darkened hours. I look
into the backyard and Jesse Owens pole vaults
over about two hundred bunnies, then
enthusiastically bites into a carrot. O earth!

Our Lady of Unmerciful Violence! Gone
arc simpler times when, if a lord died,
his slaves, chaplain, cook, butler, dwarves,
deformed men, and whosoever had most

served him throughout his life were put to death.
Bunnies become brilliant at math and quite
radical. Bunnies wake me at four in the morning
to eat carrots—I dream terrible things

and ask for forgiveness. I walk on a beach
with a girl I love. Bunnies speak in a different
language that I can't understand, making them
unstoppable. I wear a powder blue shirt

and yellow sweater, deliver goodness in a futile
attempt at plea bargaining. Gone are the simpler
times when a man was not allowed to touch,
much less eat, an egg laid

on a festival day. Yea, if it be doubtful
whether it were then laid and if it be mix'd
with others, all were prohibited. The coyotes of God
rise over a hilltop, thirsty for things. In the Bible

Moses parts a sea of bunnies to free
the Israelites. In the Bible bunnies form
a good athletic team and go 42-26
in their first season. In the garden, the carrots

vanish while bunnies grow stronger and more
agile. I glance outside and a bunny
bench presses eighty pounds. This is not
good, I think, as a bunny apologetically crashes

through a window during an endurance drill.
Once, I loved a girl. Once, a bunny
jumped over a volcano, awestriking several
Polynesians. Once, we walked all over,

to a cinema, to an ocean, to an invisible
beach. Once, coyotes stayed beyond the hilltop,
bunnies played fiddles at nightfall.
Once, she and I would sit with one another

all through the night. Bunnies arrived,
ate carrots, but I didn't care. That was enough.
But then, bunnies began to excel at hurdling,
the javelin, and several east coast sports

that I can't name, like field hockey and lacrosse
and even more elitist ones you've never
heard of, like hunting the impoverished. One evening,
on my way home from the library, the church

bells are so beautiful that I can't walk.
I sit by a fountain and wait. God simply
vanishes. Far on the outskirts of town,
the bunny factory ceases its production of bunnies.

Copyright © 2007 Jason Bredle All rights reserved
from Pain Fantasy
Red Morning Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission