April Fool’s falls on Easter this year:

I just thought you’d like to take that in here

once I almost had a scorpion for my pet

its curious tail struck out small flame

from summer’s humid porch & long ago winter

had left but when those snows —

so many falling rooms silent on walks for the cows’

bells scraping the white air white fences O, when the snow disappeared —

my father trapped the creature in a mason jar

flushed the body its deadly thorn far far down

into our American Standard it swam

pointlessly back to a desert April Fool’s

falls on Easter it’s all coming soon

I am alive & straddle this world beneath the moon’s

damaged face it is a golden coin I must give back

to America through her economic plumbing I will

hurry it to the hunger-stream I will give the night

gold that vanishes its worth stripped away tarnished

peeled back humiliated I celebrate this fool this mission.

Raphael Maurice is co-editor at U City Review, a poet, translator, and reader. He resides in Washington, MO where the river keeps its secrets.