Maybe you just need a good thrashing
at the hand of some obscure god
who makes you feel the way food coloring
in a box lit you up in the baking aisle
of childhood, or when you closed eyes in
the gallbladder of car wash spinners
believing you’d been in their midst before.
You spend a lot of time looking into
the sky as if it’s an unexceptional face
passed over by a talent agency, cold pond
of gasoline-rainbow waters, a gesture
with no meaning in this particular country
but banned abroad. Maybe we’re just
too dirty to worship, or to be worshiped.