By Michael Derrick Hudson

Almost everything got in. Even the dinosaurs stomp around
the hot tubs and gazebos, haloes shimmering over

their massive intelligent skulls, grunting Alleluias. Atheists

made it too, although they have to wear little red beanies so
we know who to gently tease for corporeal

hopelessness and infidelity: Cheer up, Christopher Hitchens!

After a while, you grow used to the bliss: not once twanging
the wrong note, lathering and shampooing

each other, sexless, in tepid frothy pools of serotonin, loving

equally each one of my great-great-great-great-grandmas and
second cousins twice-removed and each one

of my dead cats taking turns to rub, purring,
against my hairless ankles. Princess! Plato! Hodge-Podge!

Rubber mice. Mandatory self-esteem. Beauty locked
in perpetuity. The standard-issue smile. The perfect Boss . . .

So mostly I like it here. The reassurance
of the unambiguously blameless, the expulsion of froideur

and doubt. It’s perpetual sunrise over a greeny-green garden
where our only lion pads by, obliged to nuzzle

our celestial lamb chewing its celestial cud. But no flyblown
scat, no blood-stained tooth. No hangovers.

No broken hearts. Sure, sometimes I miss a liony feral glint,
an unappeasable urge, the gross sentimentality

of loss. Sometimes I just want something careworn, regretful,
dilapidated, or stupid. Sometimes you just want

to fuck with them. Today, I got a demerit for goofing around
when ordering lunch: scorched coffee, black as hell,

a day-old chocolate donut with sprinkles, a quart of rye, and

a very specific spring lamb on a skewer, half-raw
half-charred. Not funny! But in Heaven records get expunged.

There’re no penalties, no parole. There’s nowhere else to go . . .

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Michael Derrick Hudson lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Boulevard, Columbia, Fugue, Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, and other journals. He was co-winner of the 2014 Manchester Poetry Prize.