We are the desert god.
His left hand plucks from the burning
what his right hand burns.
The farmer in the photo holds a stalk of fescue:
“To you people it’s just grass.
To me it’s money.”
In autumn it goes up in smoke,
a fitting sacrifice.
The nations of the salmon
return upriver to the festival
of the nations of the desert,
leap, and become money in midair.
There is no festival.
The god debates fate
while with his hands he feeds his mouth,
eating the fingers one by one.