BY SEAN PATRICK MULROY
Copyright is held by the author.
The God of Gambling Rolls the Dice
the beginning is a mania
deliriously drunk and down 500 bucks last fistful of your chips
on the roulette wheel cocktail waitress on a first name basis you look up
and notice him, the handsome stranger on a winning streak
posed like Sinatra on a postcard he’s a snake-eyed kind of gorgeous
lucky in a way some folks kill just to stand near and he wins
and wins and wins and acts surprised each time
you stumble
bankrupt to the bathroom splash cold water on your face
you open your eyes and he’s standing there behind you in the mirror
when you turn around it’s like your whole life has been underwater
and he is a strong hand pulling you up from the current he asks
Do you wanna know the secret to roulette?
he leans in close and whispers Just don’t play.
he smells like money takes you to an empty stall
and offers you a line of coke so good you get high just by looking at it
when security kicks in the door a little while later
dragging you both by your half-unbuttoned shirts
to the back room that’s reserved for criminals and cheaters
you’re scared frantic but he’s focused calm
he waves his hand ever so slightly and then
every slot machine around you starts up screaming victory and chaos
vomiting their WIN WIN WIN to a confused mob
of casino patrons you break free make a run for it
you dash down centre aisle out the door a storm
of quarters showering you like a spray of wedding rice
Hermes Turns Up the Car Stereo
and it’s Megadeth, again, or Guns N’ Roses.
Sometimes Queensryche, rarely Poison or Crüe.
He says, This is my favourite song!
no matter what song is playing.
You could taste him, just for that. For being all
things liar and little boy, a jack-in-the-box
singing along to Rocket Queen. His voice, a warm
polaroid, slowly develops in your palm; you are
only half in-frame.
In 1999, we all watched Woodstock burn. Metallica played
for hours. Eris got everyone stoned. Artemis gave Ares a
bloody nose in the pit, but I missed it. I was across the field
at the second stage listening to Symphony of Destruction.
What a night.
His white convertible is a cliché he doesn’t
recognize, an anchorless boat. Trust, a seatbelt,
keeps you tight against him, this man who isn’t
a man at all, who never makes love, never stops
travelling, even when he has nowhere to go,
who loves only distance, and velocity, an axe
screaming through wind shear.
You say, I had no idea you were such a metal fan,
and he all but slams on the brakes.
He says,
Kid, I am not a fanof anything. I’m a patron. A goddamned
guide. You listen when Mustaine plays — who do you think
pulled the wings off their ankles to slap on his fingers?
The god of Roads Has Given Up on Oil Libations
settling instead for coffee.
He sits in a bookstore café reading magazines,
two at a time.
He keeps his fingers crossed
for the shoplifters as they inch closer to the door.
Let the dead find their own way to hell,
he thinks, swallowing the last dregs from his mug.
On the way home, he walks past a tent city beside a
highway overpass, and whistles a good dream into the
ear of someone sleeping there.
The God of Invention Reads the Sharper Image Catalogue
Look at this, he says,
holding up the wrinkled page he’s been staring at for the past hour.
A house-cleaning robot,
bedroom slippers with lights in the toes,
a clock radio/personal massager/battery recharger,
a miniature remote-controlled boat that catches fish . . .
You people really have invented everything.
He sighs.
For just a moment, he looks tired
in a way only someone very old can be —
but then he shakes his head and chuckles,
pointing to a page that reads:
LIMITED EDITION DIGITAL PRINT OF A PIMENTO OLIVE RIDING A MOTORCYCLE.
SIGNED BY THE ARTIST!
The word invention comes from the Latin, inventus— to discover. Someone had to
come up with the word, too. Nobody ever came up with a word for uninvention,
though. I guess we never thought we’d need one. The closest thing is non inventire,
which just means, to not discover. We need a word for taking what’s been found and
throwing it over your shoulder like a boring seashell.
He flips past pictures of a phone shaped like your pet, elastic girdles
for your face, and a waterproof dvd player for the shower, before
he throws the catalog in the trash with a grunt.
Athena warned me not to take this job, you know. I should have listened to her.
It was different in those days. One of you would start with a problem, then pray for a
solution — something to satisfy a need. That was a good gig. I liked helping people.
Maybe not as much as Prometheus, but still. Trouble is, you people ran out of needs.
Now, I have to make up new ones for you. God of invention, god of commerce, god of
lies — I used to have one of the biggest spreads in Olympus. I figured that way, I’d
never get bored. Everything bleeds together, now. Nothing makes any real sense.
The boredom is the worst bit. About the only thing that surprises me nowadays, is
what you people will actually believe you need.
***
Writer, multi-disciplinary artist, and faggotry hauntologist Sean Patrick Mulroy is an internationally recognized poet, performer, and award-winning professor. Mulroy has given lectures on history, poetry, politics, and queer rights, as well as readings of his creative work, in bars, museums, schools, embassies, theater festivals, and underground clubs on four continents, in over 30 countries. A 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow, 2018 Writer-in-Residence at The Kerouac Project in Orlando, Florida, winner of the 2019 Margaret Reid Prize, and winner of the 2020 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest, Mulroy’s debut poetry collection, Hated for the Gods, was published by Button Poetry in 2023. Born and raised in the American South, he presently lives in NYC.