Midnight Trapper | Brandon Shane

We left the swamps driving westward,

alligators, mosquitoes, crosses and gasoline,

long days of gunpowder bosses with hairy chins

predatory as any animal one might

stumble upon late night in the everglades,

storks bedding leaning cypress trees,

high shadows projecting darkness

upon bloated carcasses, the dull hum of flies,

park rangers staring into the dead marshes

and receiving a reflection of calico and psalms.

God loved me enough

to find the animal in him,

and blessed are the refugees,

the survivors of massacres,

unheard and unseen.

Years ago, a flood washed away

the professional dupe in my closet,

and the following storm scrubbed what was

left decomposing in the blood-stained attic.

How strange they come,

and the highest pillars always fall,

those righteous against the cause

are filled with the marrow of men

they would publicly burn to death.

This is God, the Old Testament God,

the New Testament God; you will find them

parting the red sea, walking into a river

and leaving with heads of the righteous,

wearing wolfskin, snakeskin,

lighting fires inside the heretics

and watching the flames

torch midnight air.

How's love to you?

How dead is the absence

my papyrus skinned sinner?

Brandon Shane is a poet and horticulturist, born in Yokosuka, Japan. You can see his work in trampset, Chiron Review, the Argyle Literary Magazine, Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Ink in Thirds, Dark Winter Lit, Prairie Home Mag, among many others. He graduated from CSULB with a degree in English.