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The Heir of All Knowing Is Forgetting
I once dreamt that God
was a girl in a flour sack dress
rolling clay between Her tiny
fingers. She started easy making
snakes, fish, moonbeams,
the Ziggurat of Ur; graduated
quickly to mule deer, beargrass,
the Basílica de la Sagrada
Família; and wept at the beauty
of Her loveliest creations:
quasars, Yosemite, democracy,
Paul Newman. Five trillion years
later, lying in Her great hammock,
thinking of all the old colors
and voices, She forgot
the word “molasses.” It scratched
like wool at the tip of Her
enormous, old tongue. “Mollusk,
mollycoddle, moldering, molest?!”
It chafed at Her all afternoon
so that She could not enjoy
the way the eucalyptus trees
knuckled the darkening heavens
or the way the fog rolled in from
the bay, slow as…as…as…
She could not say.
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Wyeth Thomas is a PhD candidate in English and Creative Writing at the University of Utah. His most recent work appears in Western Humanities Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Best New Poets 2022. He currently lives in Salt Lake City.
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Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, Barcelona