Tiny Gods

Eric Fisher Stone

Bacteria fulfill the mystery
of my flesh. I bequeath myself
to meekest inheritors, to mites
loping like planets through darkness,
gnats glinting star-forged wings, clusters
of toads and slender newts, Junebugs
smashing through the jazzy plum
of the night air, sugar ants creeping
in cupboards, olms blind in black water,
amoebas dripping fingers through
raindrop lakes, millipedes prickling
earth’s worm-work, pious crawdads
praying in stock-tank chapels,
microbial angels ticking and gnawing
at the Parthenon’s stylobate,
Lascaux Cave, the pyramids of Giza.

ERIC FISHER STONE is a poet from Fort Worth, Texas, where he graduated from Texas Christian University and works at a PetSmart. He is also an incoming graduate student at Iowa State University’s MFA in Writing and Environment program. His poems have appeared most recently in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Yellow Chair Review, Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry, Uppagus, Third Wednesday, Eunoia Review, New Mexico Review and Turtle Island Quarterly.