God is a Capitalist
       

I, too, want honesty in exchange for my good money, a warm body
to accompany me when I'm lonely,

feeling the way trees must feel absorbing the used-up light
along highways, a song whose human-less pulse undoes me

as kindness undoes me, sometimes getting what I want
and wearing the smug look of a road gleaming from within,

how you know when someone, without meaning to, is telling you the truth—
my sister hustling, her Lucite heels steeped in cash,

each of us loaded with expired magic. I'm talking about a weariness of stars, crooked
hope, the kind perfected in southern hemispheres where tourists go

buying up the spirit of revolution. We all want a lap dance
to mean something, and now, watching her up there

I can't say where she got it from, the drive to keep making something
beautiful out of it, glittering beyond recognition,

and it rips my goddamned heart out, watching it unfold as it must
every night, the story of our naked life.

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Copyright © 2014 Kendra DeColo All rights reserved
from Thieves in the Afterlife
Saturnalia Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission