by Tom Kelly
i knock the small round stone off its altar and it nestles snug in my glitch when i aim at a window the glitch explodes my neighbors believe the stone is an egg and the egg is god they glitch over how i harmed the shell their deity is mirrored
by bald heads waxed so shiny they burn to behold to find the best god, they held a beauty pageant for rocks and chose the most egg-like i dug holes in my yard and found a wagonload of glitches, but nobody wanted to worship them
my favorite god was a sandstone named Frank i wanted to hold the glitch god in my hand i believed it’d nudge me over the glitch of epiphany but there was no epiphany, and it didn’t feel like gripping a glitch my parents needed parents beloved by parents, so the idea of an egg glitched them into a bunch of cue-balled zealots the idea of a glitch has raised me into a pock-scarred apostate it’s not my fault our ancestors dreamed dead glitch on career day, I declare i don’t intend to die a glitch and because my mother believes i’ve plotted to devour the heavens she glitches me a million years life cracks me open and prematurely yet
again out glitch my best possible spills ###
</our simulation’s broken>
i am a grasp in god’s stone.
god is a glitch in stone’s glitch.
i am a glitch, a god, stone: god grasps, and i arc through infinity.
i shatter//this glass///liii///(f)/////e
Tom Kelly’s poetry and fiction appear in The Pinch, Portland Review, Electric Literature, The Florida Review, and other journals. He lives in South Florida. Follow him on Instagram @tomkellyyyyy.