←

"To All the Souls Gliding Slowly and Pearlescently Up to Heaven
Who, at the Moment of Total Incineration at Ground Zero 
of the First Nuclear Strike in the Final World War, 
Just So Happenedto Be Purchasing Sex Toys" by Rich Boucher

Just think of it,

what’s happened,

and try to think of it as just.

You could be trying that on, 

or in, or out, forever and ever;

you could be trying to relax 

while it goes in all the way for all eternity.

The sound of your voice inquiring 

after the kinds of batteries it takes,

the voice of your sound asking 

if water will do damage to it,

asking if it will do damage to you 

or to someone or something else,

the shocked look on the clerk’s face,

the bored look on the clerk’s face,

the annoyed clerk, disinterested clerk,

clerk getting very little 

in the way of a commission at all,

the clerk thinking thoughts of you

she’d never have thought if you and she

walked past each other ever anywhere else in time,

the cloying cleanser smell throughout the store:

everything has a reason and a purpose, yes, Ecclesiastes?

Yes, these will be your last memories 

of your earthbound life, not the coffee you had

before heading out of the house 

on the beautiful Spring morning of Doomsday,

not the kiss on the cheek from him or her or x

as you head out the door to go get some,

not the car horns or the giggling babies in radio ads

or that mailman fellow always so robotic,

squat scuttling like a white ladybug

describing in a so slow circle 

the curve of the cul-de-sac you live in

as to you he brings never-ending 

grocery circulars and utility bills. 

And now as you slowly rise up past 25,000 feet

with exactly 75,000 more feet to go before

you arrive at the Pearly Gates,

and as you try to remember the secret knock,

look down at your hands; look down at your waists;

your posture is still in the moment just before the blast;

see that you’re still hefting that brutal, black dildo,

evaluating its impressive weight and shine;

see how you still have that vicious strap-on on

over your pants because you couldn’t wait to see 

how it looked right there at the sales counter;

see the plug’s pink sapphire gem twinkling,

the brilliance and color fading to dark

in the ghostly palm of your hand

as you rise further and further

away from daylight’s 

last hurrah