God of Corn Skypes with God of Trees
Joanna Valente

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*

A man calls you, keeps saying he can’t hear.
Reception is bad in a place surrounded by trees.

You cross the street on 6th Ave without looking
& a man calls out for you & you say you are no one’s

mother. A baby elephant is on Bedford taking photos
in a crowd that is big & in this crowd you are small &

everyone knows it. Right now, you are five blocks apart
& several avenues away from a man in a corn field

that is made of polyurethane grass—watching women
have the best orgasms of their lives while jay-walking

the space between two human faces—a vacuum
where poems go to die.

*
You say I grow toward

the sun but it’s the only way I can be aloof
while humans turn to empty warehouses—vessels

for my boredom. Like TV, I watch as they turn earth
into useless matter—I’d rather destroy cancer

with plague than blessing. Once I wished to be
a mother—tending rain to roses, seeds to corn—

millions of years later, humans are naming
their dogs because the only thing worse than death

is desire. All humans desire something else
when they are alone—I will waste their lives

for them. All men must die.