The Third Source

In the first source,

an angel bashfully

hands a dirty guy

two stone tablets,

and it feels sorry

human beings have

to be told what to do.

In the second, the

devil proudly slips

a picture of an idol,

face like a TV set

left on XXX movies,

to a man who thinks

he's smarter than

everyone else, and

much more handsome.

But maybe it's

all in the third,

a laboratory coat –

enameled with

test tubes, a halo

of stardust and void

inside its sleeves,

a pitchfork of earth,

water, and air

in the pockets –

ready to dress you

in the cold, dead

facts, just those

Donald Illich has published poetry in The Iowa Review, Fourteen Hills, Roanoke Review, and New Zoo Poetry Review.  His work will be included in future issues of dANDelion, Passages North, Nexus, Nimrod, Lit, Combo Magazine, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, and The Sulphur River Literary Review, among others.  He received a Prairie Schooner scholarship to the 2006 Nebraska Summer Writer’s Conference and a 2006 Pushcart Prize nomination.