Paper Nest The angry Gods do not require us           Or any wine we sacrifice to them.           You feel so lost, so very superfluous? Get over it. Just listen to the hum Of glossolalia in the paper head,           The fat and purple wasps half-spat across           The field to blondie’s hair and brother’s red Feathers. Ah, tongues of burning Pentecost Will not serve anybody any good.                     Red vipers gossip in the kitchen garden, Brown moths put out the light, the color of wood. A beetle died on the patio, a demon Broken open, an empty fortune cookie.           Two voices answer me: Wrap up the past.           Expose the pupa’s face. Dissect the tree Of bone, and scalpel down the tongue’s red shaft– Such painful mercy, the sting we needed most.