Pasture
       

Tired at last with prayer, I leave my bedside
and stalk the farm with an old wooden bat

murdering lightning bugs and envisioning angels
in fatal flutters-wings smeared across

the sky. Handfuls of crushed abdomens still dimly lit
I rub on my face and palms like war paint. Anointed,

I swing feral at the moon and stars
picturing a frightened god and his fragile

son in their crumbling dim plunge.
Nebraska night compresses around each blow,

begins the slow burial of bodies, blame. My mother
is pronounced into the clearing suddenly, quietly,

thin layers of nightgown covering her body.
I point to the dark empty sky,

the slaughter in the pasture,
my thin sweaty chest.

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Copyright © 2012 Ben Clark All rights reserved
from Reasons To Leave The Slaughter
Write Bloody
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission