By Brad Aaron Modlin

Because of a clerical error for which the temp agency sincerely apologizes,
today I’m a tour guide at “Jimmy’s Sistine-Chapel Warehouse Replica

and Gift Shop!” where I try to avoid laser-pointing to the Biblical genitals while children
and art critics ask about pigment-to-egg ratios of contemporary fresco restoration.

These people saved for weeks for a tour with an eloquent expert named
Albert, and I won’t tell them they got me instead. Though my father warned,

“Don’t trust someone who never says, I don’t know,” when the critics question if I’m sure
the panel overhead is titled “Then God Makes a Red Planet,” I think not of my father,

but of confident, informed Albert and shout, “Contrapposto!” which is a word
I remember from art appreciation class. “Why is that naked man building a boat?”

a child asks about Noah, and I say, “God wanted a re-do.”
When I point to Samson’s rippling thighs, I am embarrassed I wore shorts.

How often have I wished to exchange body parts—legs, stomachs—with a passerby?
One who could walk tall surrounded by all these fearless nudes.

The children are confused about God
ready to touch his index finger to Adam’s, assembling him from dirt.

“God should have used gold or rubies,” a blond boy says, “but who am I to criticize?”
A girl asks, “So Adam is our great-great grampa?” “If so,” I say, “Our great-great-great grampa

is earth.” The critics point at me, and I point at the ceiling, where, as usual,
the divine and the human point at each other.

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Brad Aaron Modlin’s books are Everyone at This Party Has Two Names and Surviving in Drought. His writing has appeared in Fourth Genre, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, The Buxton Contemporary Art Gallery in Australia, The Slowdown with Ada Limón, and Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama. The Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at University of Nebraska, Kearney, he teaches (under)grads, curates the visiting writers series, and gets lost on familiar streets.